9 Answers
This question always sends me down a rabbit hole of historical and Polish literature, and I love that. If by 'Antoni' you mean the Polish given name, one of the clearest examples I can point to is Wiesław Myśliwski's 'Stone Upon Stone' ('Kamień na kamieniu') — the narrator is an older rural man named Antoni whose memories and voice carry the book. It’s a beautiful, meditative novel where Antoni’s life, the landscape, and the small dramas of village life are front and center.
If instead you’re thinking of the Roman figure Marcus Antonius (often anglicized as Antony), plenty of historical novels treat him as a central figure. Readable entry points are Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius' (where Antonius appears as a vivid presence in that imperial tale), the sweeping Colleen McCullough 'Masters of Rome' sequence where Antony features heavily, and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra', which makes Antony one of the principal players alongside Cleopatra. Those take very different approaches — intimate first-person-style retellings, broad epic reconstructions, and romanticized biographical fiction — so you can pick the tone you prefer. Personally, I adore the contrast between Myśliwski’s quiet Antoni and the larger-than-life Marcus Antonius in the Roman epics; both feel deeply human to me.
You'd think a name as crisp as 'Antoni' would pop up all over fiction, but in my reading I’ve noticed it’s pretty rare in English-language novels as the primary protagonist.
I don’t have a long catalogue of mainstream novels where the title character is literally named 'Antoni'. What I can say from digging through historical and translated fiction is that the related forms of the name — 'Antony', 'Antonio', 'Antoine', 'Anton' — show up a lot more. For example, if you’re open to close variants, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) is central to many historical novels about late Republican Rome and Cleopatra; Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius' and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' put him in very prominent roles. Also, in non-English literatures — Polish, Catalan, or Romanian — 'Antoni' appears more often as a given name for key characters, but these tend to be regional works or translations that don’t always surface in English-language lists.
If your interest is strictly novels where the main character is spelled exactly 'Antoni', I’d start with national library catalogs and university repositories (Poland’s Biblioteka Narodowa, for instance) and search Goodreads/WorldCat with exact-match queries. Personally, I enjoy uncovering those lesser-known regional novels, so I’d check Polish contemporary fiction and local author bibliographies — I’ve found some hidden gems that way before, even if they don’t have wide English coverage.
My quick take: exact matches for a main character named 'Antoni' are uncommon in anglophone mainstream fiction. Variants like 'Antony' and 'Antonio' show up all the time — especially in historical novels about Rome or in Mediterranean settings. For direct hits, look to Polish or other Slavic literature where 'Antoni' is a standard given name; library catalogs and Goodreads keyword searches are your best friends. I’ve found a few regional novels this way in the past, and they often have a different flavor from what you see on bestseller lists.
I’ve spent a lot of time hunting down character names across languages, so here’s the short, practical bit: there aren’t many widely-known novels in English whose protagonist is spelled 'Antoni'. What you’ll frequently find are novels where closely related names appear as central figures — 'Antony' (the Roman general), 'Antonio' (common in Spanish or Italian settings), or 'Anton' (Eastern European). Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius' and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' both feature the Roman figure Marcus Antonius prominently, though neither book’s main narrator goes by the modern Polish/Slavic form 'Antoni'.
If you want to track down exact hits, I like to run boolean searches on WorldCat and Goodreads: try "intitle:Antoni" and filter by language, or search library catalogs in Poland or Catalonia. You’ll also sometimes find modern novels where a family member or youth named 'Antoni' becomes central in coming-of-age or rural portraits — those are often by regional writers and may not have big translations, but they exist and are rewarding to read. Personally, I think the hunt is half the fun.
Okay — straight talk from someone who nerds out about names and characters: the name 'Antoni' crops up much more often in Central and Eastern European fiction than in anglophone novels. A solid, well-known example with Antoni as the central voice is Wiesław Myśliwski’s 'Stone Upon Stone' ('Kamień na kamieniu'), where the protagonist Antoni narrates rural memory and small-scale tragedy in a way that’s both lyrical and plainspoken. If you broaden the search to variants like Antonius or Antony, you get the Roman heavyweights. Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius' and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' both put Marcus Antonius/Antony in a starring or major role, and Colleen McCullough’s 'Masters of Rome' series treats him across several volumes. If you want more names, try searching library catalogs or Goodreads for 'Antoni' plus country filters — Polish and other Slavic-language fiction are good places to find protagonists named Antoni. I love how the same name can evoke a quiet country narrator or an explosive Roman general depending on language and era.
If you’re thinking of living personalities named Antoni rather than fictional ones, there are books that feature real Antoni — for example, Antoni Porowski published a non-fiction cookbook titled 'Antoni in the Kitchen', which is about food and memoir rather than fiction. But for fictional protagonists spelled exactly 'Antoni', the pickings in English are slim; you see more of the variants 'Antony'/'Antonio'/'Anton'.
My casual recommendation: widen the net to include those variants and check regional catalogs (Polish publishers, Catalan libraries, etc.). I’ve found that once you start searching in the original language, a few novels pop up where 'Antoni' is the central figure in a family saga or coming-of-age story — and reading them gives such a different vibe than the usual bestseller shelf. Happy hunting — these little discoveries are the treats I live for.
Trying a slightly nerdy angle here: I tend to separate searches by language family and historical period. In English historical fiction you’ll frequently encounter 'Antony' as Marcus Antonius in narratives around Cleopatra — again, Robert Graves' 'I, Claudius' and Margaret George's 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' come to mind for prominent portrayals. But if you insist on that exact Polish/Slavic orthography, 'Antoni' tends to be a name that appears in domestic, pastoral, or modern realist novels written in Polish or nearby literatures; they’re often translated only sporadically, which makes them harder to find via mainstream aggregator sites.
My method when I want to find those exact-name protagonists: search national bibliographies (for Poland, use Bibliography of Polish Literature), run targeted queries on WorldCat and Google Books with the exact string ""Antoni"" in quotes, then follow author pages and local publisher catalogs. It’s a slower chase but I’ve uncovered interesting regional novels that way — small-press fiction where 'Antoni' is a fully-drawn lead, living in a village or grappling with family legacies. I enjoy those intimate, lesser-known portraits more than big-name historical epics, honestly.
Alright, picture a lazy Sunday of book-hunting: I chased down novels that actually center on a character called Antoni and found two satisfying lanes. The first lane is modern Polish fiction — most notably 'Stone Upon Stone' ('Kamień na kamieniu') by Wiesław Myśliwski, where Antoni is the literal storyteller and the novel unfolds as his long, stubborn memory. That one’s intimate, slow, and oddly addictive. The second lane is historical fiction about Marcus Antonius (Antony) — different spelling, same root — which appears in several anglophone historical novels. Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius' treats him as a vivid court figure, Colleen McCullough’s 'Masters of Rome' novels give him a sweeping, multi-volume arc, and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' places him at the heart of a love-and-politics drama. Personally, I bounce between those two flavors: I’ll read Myśliwski for quiet interiority and Graves or McCullough when I want scheming, gladiatorial Rome and larger-than-life personalities.
Quick, conversational take from someone who runs a tiny book club: if you want novels where 'Antoni' is actually the main spotlight, start with Wiesław Myśliwski’s 'Stone Upon Stone' — Antoni is the narrator and the emotional core. If you’re fine with a spelling shift to Antony/Antonius, then classic historical novels like Robert Graves’ 'I, Claudius', Colleen McCullough’s 'Masters of Rome' sequence, and Margaret George’s 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' treat Marcus Antonius as a principal figure. Two very different vibes — one intimate and pastoral, the others epic and Roman — and I find both equally rewarding in their own ways.