La dolce vita... Photograph: AdrianDennis/AFP/Getty

Dear tourists: let us begin this month with a tribute and an apology.

Firstly, thank you all for the many and various recommendations of books for May's destination, Japan. With the notable exception of Haruki Murakami, Japanese literature is woefully underrepresented in the UK, so it's extremely useful to be armed with your suggestions of the authors to whom we should be turning next.

Now for the apology. It shames us to confess that, so distracted were we by the combination of the Hay festival and a subsequent (and ongoing) desk-wide summer holiday exodus, we allowed nearly two months to slide by without moving onto our next destination. Remiss of us, I'm sure you'll agree.

But late, as they say, is better than never, and after counting up last month's votes, we're happy to reveal that our next stop is a fittingly sunny one.

From Dante and Petrarch to great modern authors such as Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, Italy has been a force to be reckoned with in world literature for centuries. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the country's finest novels and writers, from the justly famous to the unjustly neglected.

A quick reminder of the rules: please post your recommendations of books - fiction, or non-fiction, poetry, essays, whatever - written in Italian but ideally available in translation (although we'll make note of any books you suggest that are unavailable in translation, too, in the hope that someone will do something about that). At the same time, we'd like you to nominate the country you'd like to visit next. After a fortnight, we'll count your nominations for the next destination and begin a new blog on the country that receives the highest number of votes.