Product Description

A journey into the heart of Sicily, using art, food, history and literature to shed light on southern Italy's legacy of political corruption and violent crime. The book takes as its starting point the ongoing trial of seven-times Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67488 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

The Book Magazine
‘essential reading’

Customer Reviews

All the passion and sadness of life on a bittersweet island
I read Peter Robb's capolavoro while on holiday in Sicily. My first two nights were in Palermo, where I noticed that once the shops close no one dares the time-honoured tradition of the evening passeggiata. And a day later, I read why, in Peter Robb's prose. You hear a footstep round a corner, a door shuts somewhere, but nowhere do you see the people. They vanish as night falls. What you sense in Sicily but can't explain, Peter Robb puts into words. It is better than any guidebook and the nearest you'll come to getting under the skin of the place. The book is a strange juxtaposition of topics. He can take you from a three-page history of caponata, quoting the Italian Mrs Beeton, Alda Busi, and Elizabeth David, to a harrowing account of Mafiosi murders, and all within the turn of a page. Yet none of this seems strange. I went from seeing women begging on the street with week-old babies in their arms to the jet-set Milanese within four hours - from Palermo to the Aeolian Islands in summer holiday mood. The book is both passion and sadness. The elements of life worth experiencing - in prose, even if you never have the chance to set foot in Sicily to experience them in the flesh.

A chilling and true picture of post-war Sicily
I have been living in Sicily for many years and I can vouch for the accuracy of this account. It is all so true, I wish I could have written it myself. But I would never have had the courage. Thank you, Peter Robb, for having put together the pieces of the mosaic for us; the result is a chilling picture indeed.

Gripping combination of politics, Mafia and food
Every other reviewer gives this 5 stars, and I have to agree. I read this before my honeymoon in Taormina, Sicily, and found it unputdownable. Anyone interested in cuisine, the Mafia, corruption, EU / Italian politics, history and culture will find enough in this book to grip them. If, like me, you are fascinated by a lot of these variables then the book is fantastic. If the reviews lead you to think the book is too dark in tone, there are just enough positives to convince even a sceptic like Robb that perhaps Sicily (and indeed Italy) has confronted the cancer that is the Mafia. Cured itself, no, not yet.