Pier Vittorio Tondelli's writings mirror many of the changes that occurred in Italian popular culture, particularly among the young, during the 1970s and 1980s. The protagonists of his four novels belong to Tondelli's generation, which came of age in the 1970s. Showing a commitment to realism Tondelli, in his first two novels, mimics the spoken language of the young as he presents the cultural milieus of Italy's exuberant counterculture in great detail. His realistic depiction of society is tempered in his last two novels, which tend more toward psychological introspection.

In his works Tondelli often organizes his narratives according to the conventions of journalistic travel literature, but he may also unite the traits of two or more distinct literary genres, an intermingling that is a salient feature of his writing. For example, in Rimini (1985), Tondelli's third book, aspects of the psychological novel coexist with a plot usually associated...