The Light in the Piazza is a 1960 novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 by Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

 writer Elizabeth Spencer

Elizabeth Spencer (writer)

Elizabeth Spencer is a writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She has written a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir , and a play...

.

At its core are Margaret Johnson and her daughter Clara, on vacation in Italy, where Clara becomes enamored of local Florentine Fabrizio. What appears on the surface to be nothing more than a romantic story of young love slowly dissolves into a more tragic tale involving a past accident with serious consequences, dark family secrets, deception, and a conflict between maternal love and responsibility and an innocent young woman's physical and emotional desires as she becomes aware of her awakening sexuality. A secondary plot resembles a comedy of manners

Comedy of manners

The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...

 as it examines the national differences between Americans and Italians, both represented in a somewhat stereotypical fashion.

Adaptations

Screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 Julius J. Epstein

Julius J. Epstein

Julius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...

 adapted Spencer's book for a 1962 film directed by Guy Green. The cast included Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

, Yvette Mimieux

Yvette Mimieux

Yvette Carmen Mimieux is a retired American movie and television actress.-Early life and career:Yvette Mimieux was born in Los Angeles, California, to a French father and Mexican mother, Carmen Montemayor...

, Rossano Brazzi

Rossano Brazzi

-Biography:Brazzi was born in Bologna to Adelmo and Maria Brazzi. He attended San Marco University in Florence, Italy, where he was raised from the age of four...

, and George Hamilton

George Hamilton (actor)

George Stevens Hamilton is an American film and television actor.-Early life:Hamilton was the youngest son of bandleader George "Spike" Hamilton and his first wife, Ann Stevens . He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and lived in Blytheville, Arkansas...

, who was nominated for a BAFTA Award

British Academy of Film and Television Arts

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...

 for his performance.

In 2005, the book inspired a musical adaptation of the same name.