After his first book's success, he spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in Semproniano in Tuscany with his partner.
Other published fiction includes the short-story collections A Place I've Never Been, Arkansas: Three Novellas and The Marble Quilt and the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, Equal Affections, While England Sleeps (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize), The Page Turner, Martin Bauman, The Body of Jonah Boyd and The Indian Clerk (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award).
He found this theme, and its suggestion that homoerotic fulfillment was reserved for the exceptionally beautiful young men, intrusive.
[5] Leavitt's 2004 novel The Body of Jonah Boyd is dedicated to the Palo Alto house he grew up in, 743 Cooksey Lane.
[5] He has been criticized for writing too quickly, which he attributes to early experiences with death convincing him that his life as a writer would be short.
He has also been influenced by John Cheever, Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, Joseph Roth, W. G. Sebald, and Grace Paley, whom he credits for teaching him the importance of humble experiences in great fiction.