The Dark Heart of Italy
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
In 1999 Tobias Jones immigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he found a very different country: one besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia. The Dark Heart of Italyis Jones's account of his four-year voyage across the Italian peninsula.
Read more
Jones writes not just about Italy's art, climate, and cuisine but also about the much livelier and stranger sides of the Bel Paese: the language, soccer, Catholicism, cinema, television, and terrorism. Why, he wonders, does the parliament need a "slaughter commission"? Why do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a "brothel"? Most of all, why does one man, Silvio Berlusconi-in the words of a famous song-appear to own everything from Padre Nostro (Our Father) to Cosa Nostra (the Mafia)?
The Italy that emerges from Jones's travels is a country scarred by civil wars and "illustrious corpses"; a country that is proudly visual rather than verbal, based on aesthetics rather than ethics; a country where crime is hardly ever followed by punishment; a place of incredible illusionism, where it is impossible to distinguish fantasy from reality and fact from fiction.
Liked The Dark Heart of Italy? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked The Dark Heart of Italy. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Midnight in Sicily Shares Italy, nonfiction, history -
The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi Shares Italy, nonfiction, politics -
The Italians Shares Italy, nonfiction, travel -
Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town Shares Italy, travel, nonfiction
