His second novel, The Mortal Wound (Ferito a morte), won Italy's most prestigious award, the Strega Prize, and is today considered a classic of Italian literature.

He contributed to the cultural pages of the Corriere della Sera and was co-director of the literary journal Nuovi Argomenti.

A particular interest was English poetry of the 1930s: as well as writing numerous articles he translated works including T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.

[5] La Capria worked as co-scriptwriter on a number of Francesco Rosi's films, including Le mani sulla città (1963), Uomini contro (1970), and Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1979).

In September 2001 he received a Premio Campiello lifetime achievement award and in 2005 L'estro quotidiano was selected as the winner of the Viareggio Prize for fiction.