If you're curious about the Italian occupation of Libya (which lasted from the 1910s until 1947), there are a couple of interesting options. "Desert Encounter" by Knud Holmboe is a memoir by a Dane who tried to travel across the Libyan desert in the 1930s and got caught in the fighting between the Italian occupying force and the Libyans. Holmboe is not exactly an unbiased source (a convert to Islam he eventually fought on the side of the Libyan resistance), but his book has gained fame as a first-hand account of an under-reported piece of history.
