Product Description

Eric Newby's earlier work "Love and War in the Appenines" described the start of his love affair with Italy. This book chronicles how his passion for Italy grew to maturity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #945903 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05-23
• Released on: 1995-08-21
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Customer Reviews

Meets a market need perfectly.
The urge to escape the comforts, routine and refinements of our living conditions to somewhere more challenging, primitive and raw is something that many of us feel - especially those who read books. The books we read can sometimes stimulate the urge, sometimes satisfy it. All I ask of such books is that the author can write well and that he is not boastful.

Eric Newby, especially in "A Small Place in Italy", meets these requirements admirably. Indeed, he ranks for me as a travel writer of near genius. He was almost 50 years old when he and his Italian born wife Wanda took up permanent residence in a ruined farmhouse in northern Italy. His account of the trials and tribulations that followed, the neighbours and the locality, is told in this wonderfully witty, readable and valuable book. Part of the value rests in the sociological and historical dimensions it gives. Even while he lived there, the customs, the occupations and the life styles were fast disappearing.

If you enjoy this genre, you'll want to give "A Small Place in Italy" a prominent place on your bookshelf.

Rural Italy with reality adn delight.
Transports one to rural Italy, a few decades ago.Pleasure and pain of restoring an old house, with the constant background of rural Italian life. Having read the book, one starts to think "I wonder if I could get a small place in Italy?" But be warned, it might just happen!!

Good read.
Having enjoyed this book so much it quite saddened me that they are no longer there, understandable though it is. For many years they were part of a simple way of life that barely exists now but how lucky we are to be able to read and appreciate how it once was.