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The different colours of Italian literature...

Posted on 07.04.2018

Literature in Italy is often associated with different colours depending on the genre. The most striking example is that of the "Libri Gialli" or "Yellow Books". When, in 1929, the publishing house Mondadori started turning out mystery stories, the books had a striking yellow cover. Thereon, the term "Giallo" or "Yellow" became widely used to describe detective novels and later expanded to also mean thrillers and suspense literature.
Then we have the "romanzi neri" or "noir novels" a subcategory of the above, which is a darker story, usually more violent and sometimes narrated from the point of view of the killer.
The colour pink was linked to romantic novels and white was connected to science fiction when in 1952 Mondadori published its first science fiction series, Urania. Then we often have Brown for historical novels, green for the adventure genre and blue for travel books.