One of the greatest Italian authors of the 20th century —Il Giornale
It's the story of a double adultery. It's told by Mario Soldati, a Turin-born writer and director, described as "the first great media man of Italian culture" by Aldo Grasso in the Corriere della Sera for his legacy of memorable works in literature, film, and television. Letters from Capri was published in 1954 and won the Strega Prize. Translated into ten languages, it would later inspire Tinto Brass's 1987 film Capriccio, starring Francesca Dellera. —Isola di Capri
There is no more versatile personality. In his long life, Mario Soldati lacked nothing: novels, short stories, poetry, film, television, painting and graphics, theater, newspapers [...]. People have spoken of volatility and dissipation, but looking at his immense archive, preserved for several years at the Centro Apice in Milan, one would rather say he was a man of energy, tireless, curious, constantly experimenting and contradicting himself, yet extremely lucid and self-aware. What can be said with certainty is that he is one of the most fascinating figures in Italian literature. —Corriere della Sera
Soldati, on the other hand, seems unwilling to convince anyone and to be self-sufficient, rather content in the world and not inviting sharing, quoting, or commentary, but rather reading in solitude. —Il Tascabile
Two-time Winner of the Strega Prize: in 1954 and 2026
Perhaps Mario Soldati’s most problematic and multifaceted novel, the one that marks his arrival at full narrative maturity.
Rich in nuance and implications, Letters from Capri centers on a complex story of love and jealousy, ambiguity and pretense. All these ingredients intertwine in the daily lives of Harry, an American journalist and scholar living in Italy, his wife Jane, bound to him by respect and trust rather than love, and the Roman Dorothea, for whom Harry feels a fierce and morbid attraction.
Against the cosmopolitan backdrop of Rome, Paris, New York, and Capri where their story unfolds, a long and complicated sentimental relationship unfolds, revolving around several letters, first lost and then found, that the irreproachable Jane supposedly wrote to an Italian lover on the splendid island of Naples.