If you have an existing knowledge of the Sicilian Mafia and of general Italian history since 1945 then this book is a treat, adding as it does a context for those incredibly turbulent decades through to, well, through to the present. I was happy to get the opportunity to journey to Palermo by train and walk around for a few hours to give me my first taste of the city.

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Less popular and humorous than his best-selling Italian Neighbours, Parks’s sequel does more than any book I know to explain how Italians become Italians. The title is inaccurate: it is not about schooling, and ought really to have been called An Italian Upbringing. Wonderfully perceptive on relations between and within the generations: “When a mother calls out Amore without further specification, she is calling for her son.” The train ride along the coast from the seaside city of Capo d’Orlando is comfortable, and with my window seat, I see many other places I’d like to visit in Sicily. The island is some 25,707 square kilometres; its mountainous landscape makes it hard to negotiate. The same harsh landscape has created hundreds of small towns, cities and villages, each with its unique language and culture, which would take a lifetime to explore. The beauty of Sicily is there is always something new to experience. I had thought of leaving this out on the grounds that it tells us more about Goethe than Italy. But it is one of the first accounts – and the most beautiful – of how the chaotic, impulsive, sensual south seduces we ratiocinating northerners, making Goethe, the creative outsider, “feel at home in the world, neither a stranger nor an exile”.Mostly I was left with a vague sense of how corrupt it seems Italian politics are, that ex-Prime Minister Andreotti was extremely dodgy (to say the least – Berlusconi seems a choirboy in comparison) and that I need to look elsewhere if I want to read about Sicilian food. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-beta-20210815 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9913 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-0000192 Openlibrary_edition There is a book by Australian writer Peter Robb which has contributed to my ongoing fascination with Palermo. After reading Midnight in Sicily , I imagined wandering through Palermo’s streets, exploring Norman palaces, experiencing the exotic food markets and discovering little hidden restaurants which cooked an endless array of seafood. Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

The top 10 books about Italy | History books | The Guardian The top 10 books about Italy | History books | The Guardian

I am trying to get a trip to Sicily organized for April. I thought this would help set the scene, though I am more interested in the volcanoes and food than the mafia. Anyone read it? This is all probably starting to sound as if I didn’t enjoy this book. I did – it’s just more of an buffet than a fulfilling meal. There's a fair bit on art and culture in the book. As someone whose cultural hinterland stops at a couple of Edward Hopper prints slung up on the lounge wall these can be tiresome - but they can also be skipped through. It is eternally deceptive; a country in which much is said by means of symbols, or simply left unsaid. So, with the possible exception of the last, the books that follow are ones that scratch at the reassuring surface of Italian life to get at the infinitely more fascinating reality below. None more purposefully than …Fortunately, there is still an important part of civil society that refuses to give up. The hope is that it will finally prevail and transform Italy into a truly European and independent country. A fascinating insight into Sicily and the Cosa Nostra, particularly the political influence of Andreotti. The extreme violence of the 1970's and 80s reads like fiction. This book is one of the very best I have read on an aspect of Italian life and politics.(The other is Christ Stopped At Eboli) I am going to read it again, as some of the detail is fading from memory. Robb, a long-term ex-pat writes seriously about the underbelly of Italian life, but also conveys hislove and respect for the country, its traditions and food especially! I enjoy travelling by train, it is comfortable, reasonably inexpensive and easy to do, especially in Italy. It’s a good idea to travel in Sicily by train as you can see a fair amount of the countryside as the line takes a coastal route, but for a few moments in the odd tunnel, you get primarily uninterrupted views. It’s a little slow, but today I’m not in a hurry, so I’m happy to look out the window and soak up the sunshine.

Midnight in Sicily - Peter Robb - Google Books Midnight in Sicily - Peter Robb - Google Books

Overlapping words: Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily and Leonardo Sciascia's Detective Stories in Italics". Swinburne Research Bank . Retrieved 6 May 2015.A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. This is an excellent insight into Sicilian life. I read this as 'research' just before I went to live there in 2000. The family I lived with were amazed of the things I knew about because I had read about them prior. That being said, it cannot be doubted that the detailed narrative shines a very illuminating light on a host of figures who deserve opprobrium. Robb centres on Giulio Andreotti, several times Prime Minister of Italy and his associations with various corrupt, murderous ‘Men of Honour’ from Michele Sandona who caused the largest banking crash in Italian history, to Shorty Riina, a corpulent brutal butcher of a man, who all but waged war against the Italian state in the early 1990s as he attempted to bend the entire Mafia and Italian government to his will. The central place of Andreotti in the book works very well, once one becomes used to the way the narrative jumps around, providing an insight into how interlinked with crime key political players were. Still in print 50 years after publication, outdated in parts, yet full of insights into the Italian psyche, which are as apt today as they were in 1964: “Dull and insignificant moments in life must be made decorous and agreeable with suitable decorations and rituals. Ugly things must be hidden, unpleasant and tragic facts swept under the carpet whenever possible.” Or, more sardonically and pertinently in the context of Italy’s current economic plight: “free competition, this selection which heartlessly favours only uncouth and rough persons whose only merits are those of passing tests, doing their job well and knowing their business, is naturally resented by most Italians”. Caronia, a little known town in one of the great forests of the Nebrodi National Park, a small part of the town, got some news coverage in 2003 for a series of unexplained electrical fires. Electrical appliances exploded and caught fire for no apparent reason. I’m sure the fact that the train line passes so close to the town must have something to do with it, all of that static electricity must affect the town.