Product Description

'Brilliant, fascinating and very funny-A highly enjoyable book' Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67160 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For the last few months Anglo-Italian novelist Tim Parks has been writing of his devotion to Italian football club Hellas Verona in The Guardian. In A Season with Verona we get a chance to read the full and absorbing narrative that lay behind those short snippets.

In some ways the book is a standard travelogue. In following his lowly Series A team in their seasonal slog around Italy, Parks gets to visit all the famous sights and cities. What makes this journey so different and so interesting is that Parks is accompanied by vividly ordinary, honestly working-class, determinedly urban Italians and gets to share their Nick Hornbyish highs and lows. This in turn provides a credible, fresh and revealing insight into the Italian character. These fans do all the normal soccer-supporter things like fight, drink, despair, exult, rant and put each other in comas; but they also do more surprising things, like sing songs in praise of the murderous Liverpool fans of Heysel and give voice to racist feelings about their southern compatriots.

This may not sound like most people's image of southern loveliness. Indeed it isn't. But it is a much needed antidote to all that saccharine-sweet Under The Tuscan Sun stuff; and it also makes this book a splendid bedside companion to the Italian campaign in the next, or indeed any, World Cup. --Sean Thomas

Joseph Brodsky
`Frankly, the best British author working today.'

Synopsis
Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? After twenty years in the Bel Pasese, Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities, and to get a fresh take on the conundrum that is the national character. A book that combines the tension of cliff-hanging narrative with the pleasure of travel writing, and the stimulation of a profound analysis of one country's mad, mad way of keeping itself entertained.

Customer Reviews

Parks Plays A Blinder!
This is a must for all literary football fans, following one of Italian soccer's less fashionable, and decidedly right wing, clubs Hellas Verona during the ill-fated season when they were last in Serie A. Like his previous books, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education, Parks really delves deep into the psyche and delivers prose with all the colour and vivaciousness of a carnival parade. The noise, the sights, even the smells and tastes of top-drawer Italian football leap from virtually every page and the real emotion which simmers eternally can be sensed as it reaches its inevitable, sometimes violent, crescendo.
The Englishman abroad style of book has often been criticized, sometimes quite rightly so, for its over prosaic, condescending treatment of the "simple, rustic locals" but, thankfully, Parks is a writer who is too close to his subject to stoop so low; he is also a writer who can express his own emotive state whenever his side loses as readily and as honestly as when he is chanting and celebrating a goal with his fellow supporters.
Great books about football are about as rare as honest politicians (or football Presidents) in Italy; this is one of those gems.

Per sempre Gialloblu!
I won't bore you with my loquacious opinion on this magnificent book (other people have done that probably better than I can among these readers' reviews). No, I will simply tell you the truth.

When I finished reading the book in May 2003, I booked a flight to Verona and a hotel near l'Arena, and went to the stadium for the last game of that season (Bari, 1-1, for the statiticians among you). I had to see la Curva Sud for myself. Since then, having made friends with one or two members of I Piu Mati (ciao Christian, ciao Alberto, ciao Fabio!) I've been back several times (including a memorable 5-3 win over rivals Vicenza [di merda!]) and they've even been over to see my humble bunch of sleeping giants (the West Country's top team, Bristol City. Well, excluding Yeovil). In short, the book inspired me, it coursed through my veins and I was like a junkie, needing a fix of the Brigate Gialloblu (minus the violenza!). A terrific, vibrant, inspiring read. Forza Signor Tim!

(PS If you liked the social/cultural/non-football parts to the book, make sure you read his Italian Neighbours and Italian Education books. The description of which coffee to drink when in the former book is as good as the opening chapter of A Season With Verona)

Classic Writing
Ask on any website message board that has anything to do with football what are the best football books and this comes up every time.

Following the unglamourous Serie A side Hellas Verona home and away through the whole Italian season, the book describes more than just the mechanics of the game, but rather the emotion and etheral stuff, the relationship between fans and team, rival fans, and indeed indiviuduals within the social group of Hellas' hardcore fans. Indeed if it is match by match 'stats' commentary you want this is nt the book, but if it is the description and analysis of the word of fotball fandom then this is it. The subtext to the football is Italy and Italian culture and this is both interesting, funny, scary and head scratching in equal measure. The author as an 'insder' in terms of his love of Hellas. whilst at the same time being an 'outsider' in regards to being an Englishman in Verona, a provincial city with an insular mindset 'us against the world' makes the writing even more interesting.

A book that is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Football, Italy, Travel or Social issues. The only criticism is on some areas the feeling is more could be said or eexplored, but thats because the writing and 'story' is so fascinating and absorbing.