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Italy, Anyone?

To order any of the books mentioned in this article, see the links at the bottom of this page.

At any given time in America there are enough current books about Italy to fill a small bookstore all by themselves. A recent check of local shelves found these titles waiting for someone to take them home:
Mistress of the Vatican, The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini, the Secret Female Pope. The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo. Italianissimo, The Quintessential Guide to What Italians Do Best. A reprint of a classic, The Italians by Luigi Barzini. The Book of Unholy Mischief, a novel by Elle Newmark set in renaissance Venice. Satyr Square, A Year, A Life, in Rome. Italy and Its Invaders. Twisted Head, An Italian-American Memoir by Carl Capotorto (a name which translates to "twisted head"), and Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr.
I haven't even mentioned the incessant stream of Italian cookbooks and Italian food and travel magazines, and travel guides to Italy.
This past week I read two startlingly excellent books on Italy: Ancient Shore, Dispatches from Naples by Shirley Hazzard with her late husband Francis Steegmuller, and a surprisingly frightening book, Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb.
There is no simple way to explain the fascination of that boot-like country. Shirley Hazzard explains her love for Naples, that most southern of major Italian cities: "Glimpses of the arcane, the grotesque, the diabolical will never fail to startle and estrange -- compounded, as in most great cities, by modern violence and disaffection. But few days will pass without some fresh discovery of dignity, delicacy, and endurance -- when you are not humbled and exalted by acts of human fellowship and inexpressible grace."
"For myself, each arrival on this shore is a rejoicing," she says.
By contrast, do not read Midnight in Sicily if you wish to maintain a rosy view of all things Italian. Peter Robb's book will disabuse anyone of their naivete.
Italy certainly is Shirley Hazzard's land of grace and charm, dignity and endurance, but in Robb's telling is also becomes a land of corruption, assassination, intimidation and international drug and prostitution rings.
Midnight in Sicily opens with an entertaining fable of the creation of Sicily, and the author's first visit to the great markets of Palermo. I had every reason to anticipate yet another whimsical story of Italian life: tomatoes, lemons, olives, and gaily decorated mule carts.
As I read forward the book transformed into a deeply researched inquiry into the hidden world of post-war Italy. In the much-maligned and much-ignored south, poverty and political impotence created two governments: one that is public and a secret government that actually runs things.
Robb's book was published in 1996, with a post script that brings it up to 2007. In the late 80's and early 1990's Italy was wracked by a crescendo of violence that permanently discredited and destroyed the Christian Democratic Party which had run the country since World War II.
Many brave judges and courageous police officials were betrayed by corrupt politicians or assassinated by the mafia. These heroes of Italy were gunned down, sometimes with their families, for attempting to expose the connection between Rome and Palermo, public government and secret government. Their stories are fascinating, thrillingly dangerous, heroic, and in most cases ultimately tragic.
In a series of trials in the 1990s, some criminals and their politician allies were exposed and convicted. The most famous of these was Giulio Andreotti, twenty times a minister and seven-times prime minister. Andreotti was convicted of mafia ties and of ordering the murder of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who published exposes. His mafia conviction was later voided due to a statute of limitations. Andreotti's conviction on murder charges was overturned by the highest court.
Robb notes, "Pecorelli stayed dead but now nobody had ordered him killed."
"Cosa Nostra," Robb writes, "is as busy as ever, always changing, always the same, doing business with the Russians, the Colombians, and anyone else whose interests coincide with its own... Faces are different, organizations have different names, yet Italy after Andreotti, after everything, remains a strangely familiar place."
Robb ends with this chilling observation: "Although Midnight in Sicily was published in a fair few countries and was generously received, it never found a publisher in Italy. The British edition... continues to do rather well in Italian bookshops."
Italy, anyone?

Aired Sunday October 12, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday October 15, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

The two books I read this week:
Ancient Shore, Dispatches from Naples by Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller. University of Chicago Press hardcover $18.00. ISBN 9780226322018.
This elegant small book consists of essays reprinted from the New York Times, the New Yorker and other publications.
Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb. Picador/St. Martin's Press paperback $16. ISBN 9780312426842.
From Wikipedia: Peter Robb (born 1946 in Toorak, Melbourne) is an Australian author. Between 1978 and 1992 he spent most of his time in Naples and southern Italy, interspersed with sojourns in Brazil. At the end of 1992 he returned to Sydney. His first book, Midnight in Sicily, was published in Australia in October 1996. It won the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize for non-fiction in 1997. His second book, M, a biography of the Italian artist Caravaggio, was published in Australia in 1998. The book provoked controversy on its publication in Britain in 2000. In 1999, he published Pig's Blood and Other Fluids, a collection of three crime fiction novellas. In 2003 Robb published his fourth book, A Death in Brazil, named The Age's non-fiction book of the year for 2004. He has taught at the University of Melbourne, the University of Oulu in Finland and the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples.
Other books mentioned:
Mistress of the Vatican, The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini, the Secret Female Pope by Eleanor Herman (author of "Sex with the Queen"). Wm. Morrow hardcover $25.95. ISBN 9780061245558.
The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo translated from the Italian by Clara Bargellini, with original illustrations. University of California Press paperback $24.95. These are journals kept in the 17th century, published here for the first time. ISBN 9780520249394.
The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo translated from the Italian by Clara Bargellini, with original illustrations. University of California Press paperback $24.95. These are journals kept in the 17th century, published here for the first time. ISBN 9780520249394.
Italianissimo, The Quintessential Guide to What Italians Do Best by Louise Fili and Lise Apatoff. Random House hardcover $18.95. ISBN 9781892145543. A slight but enjoyable book best left on the back of the commode.
A reprint of a classic, The Italians This "Full-length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals" is one of the best books ever written about modern Italy. A gem. Simon & Schuster paperback $16. ISBN 9780684825007.
The Book of Unholy Mischief, a novel by Elle Newmark set in Renaissance Venice. Atria Books hardcover $25. ISBN 9781416590545. To be published December, 2008.
Satyr Square, A Year, A Life, in Rome by Leonard Barkan "a Woody Allen character adrift in a Fellini world." Northwestern University Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 9780810124943.
Italy and Its Invaders by Girolamo Arnaldi. Harvard University Press paperback $15.99. ISBN 9780674030336. From the publisher: "This outside-in history of Italy is a telling reminder of the many interwoven strands that make up the fabric of modern Europe."
Twisted Head, An Italian-American Memoir by Carl Capotorto. Broadway Books hardcover $23.95. ISBN 9780767928618. From the publisher: "...the comedic story of a hardscrabble, working-class family's life that represents the real legacy of Italian-Americans -- labor, not crime."
Four Seasons in Rome, by Anthony Doerr. Subtitled "On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World." Scribner paperback $14. ISBN 9781416573166.
How the Italians Invented the Modern World. This book has yet to be written, and no doubt some day soon it will be. In the meantime you can read Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World, the True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It Random House paperback $14.95. ISBN 0609809997.

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