FICTION

After the Divorce, Grazia Deledda, 1995. A novel about adultery and murder by the Italian Nobel Prize Winner and Sardinian native Grazia Deledda.

Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brien, 1990. The very first in the wildly popular series of historical novels, Master and Commander is set during the Napoleonic Wars.

Reeds in the Wind, Grazia Deledda, 1913. A Jane Austenesque novel by the Nobel Prize winning author about three sisters, which wonderfully captures the local superstitions and how they influenced island life in the early 20th century.

NON-FICTION

The Lead Goat Veered Off: A Bicycling Adventure on Sardinia, Neil Anderson, 2000. The memoir of a man and his wife who decide to trade in their life in Canada and bike the little-traveled byways of Sardinia.

The Pillars of Hercules, Paul Theroux, 1996. Classic musings of the observant wanderer Paul Theroux as he follows in the footsteps of Hercules along the Mediterranean coast from the Riviera and Corsica to Albania and Morocco, with lots of stops, including Sardinia, along the way.

Sea and Sardinia, D.H. Lawrence, 1921. The writer and his wife spent only nine days on the island in 1921 but his account is a wonderful evocation of the local traditions and eccentricities.