San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel Presents the New Summer Book Club

From the reading lists shared by Dua Lipa through her Service95 Book Club to the gatherings of the Miu Miu Literary Club during the Salone del Mobile, literature has returned to the heart of contemporary conversation. Books, no longer confined to bookshops, are coming back to life on beach club tables and in the tote bags of travellers — creating an aesthetic language, a declaration of taste, a new cultural status symbol.

And there is a place that has always had an authentic and natural relationship with literature: San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel, which today unveils the club of the summer: the Summer Book Club.

Overlooking the Sicilian coastline and steeped in the history of a 15th-century former monastery, San Domenico Palace has been for decades a retreat and gathering place for some of the most significant literary figures of the twentieth century.

Illustrious names have frequented this iconic address: Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence, Truman Capote, John Steinbeck, and Vladimir Nabokov. It is here, according to legend, that Lawrence found inspiration for Lady Chatterley’s Lover during his stay in the 1920s. Thomas Mann, Anatole France, Tennessee Williams, and the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova also stayed at San Domenico. It was Goethe, in his Italian Journey, who first put Taormina on the map of the European Grand Tour — that cultural pilgrimage considered indispensable to the formation of every well-bred young person. From that moment on, the town became a mandatory stop for anyone who took their intellectual life seriously.

From this natural heritage, the new Summer Book Club is born: a project designed to accompany guests throughout the summer with a curated selection of titles to be read on a terrace overlooking the sea, the ancient cloister, and the long Sicilian days.

This summer, guests staying in rooms and suites will find a dedicated brochure upon arrival and may request their chosen title from the Summer Book Club list, receiving it on loan along with a dedicated tote bag and a bookmark specially designed for the Club — a quiet invitation to slow down, read, and inhabit time differently.

The selection includes 10 titles chosen as a natural extension of the spirit of this place: timeless classics, cult novels, and contemporary works united by an immediate, intense, and deeply summery narrative elegance.

Among the titles featured: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Italian Journey by Goethe, Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, Lighea by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino — the latter personally chosen by Imelda Shllaku, General Manager of the hotel. Alongside the great classics, contemporary voices include Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, and White Noise by Don DeLillo.

The launch of the Summer Book Club also coincides with one of the city’s most culturally vibrant moments: TAOBUK – Taormina International Book Festival, which each year transforms this iconic small Sicilian town into an international stage dedicated to literature, welcoming writers, artists, and intellectuals from around the world.

With this project, San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel, further deepens its natural bond with the local and international cultural world, transforming the hospitality experience into something more personal, more intimate, and part of lasting memory.