Midnight in Sicily: on Art, Food, History, Travel and La Cosa Nostra

Product Information

But it is one of the first accounts – and the most beautiful – of how the chaotic, impulsive, sensual south seduces we ratiocinating northerners, making Goethe, the creative outsider, “feel at home in the world, neither a stranger nor an exile”.

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb | Open Library Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb | Open Library

Sicily - that once powerful kingdom that demanded respect and envy throughout Europe - toils in its own underachievement, marred by a vicious cycle of internal contempt. A man who built his power base within the DC through his "friends" in Sicily and who was up to neck in "it". I thought this would help set the scene, though I am more interested in the volcanoes and food than the mafia. Trying to disentangle the fishing nets of Italian politics from 1945 onwards is an ordeal from which most would shirk.I am pleasantly surprised by the author's knowledge of Italian culture and history, something quite rare with non-Italian authors. Caronia, a little known town in one of the great forests of the Nebrodi National Park, a small part of the town, got some news coverage in 2003 for a series of unexplained electrical fires. Ideally read in conjunction with Paul Ginsborg’s masterly History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988.

Midnight in Sicily : on art, food, history, travel and La

The often elaborate descriptions of places, art and various photographs will drive the curious reader to the internet anyway but it would have been a real bonus to have them in the book. Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable.I feel like I had seen Stone Hedge for a fleeting moment, it was something ancient, crafted and intriguing, but it passed by so quickly that I didn’t have a moment to absorb it. I suddenly wonder who would climb over a busy train line to go and look at some out of the way ruins. Overlapping words: Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily and Leonardo Sciascia's Detective Stories in Italics". His first book, Midnight in Sicily, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize for non-fiction in 1997. cite book|author=Peter Robb |date=1999 |orig-date=1996 |title=Midnight in Sicily |url=https://archive.

Midnight in Sicily - Wikipedia

The same harsh landscape has created hundreds of small towns, cities and villages, each with its unique language and culture, which would take a lifetime to explore. One of the greatest charms of Robb's book is his evident delight in southern Italy, particularly its food, which is recorded with such intensity of memory that one can almost taste it. And the picture that emerges is shocking and dis-heartening even for a reader already intimate with many events of recent Italian history.Many artists saw a connection between the rich food of Sicily and the mob, which Robb expertly exploits, even repeating an ironic quote from Andreotti himself: ""I found myself with my stomach full of marvelous but terrible food, the pasta con le sarde, the cassata and not only did I not understand a thing there but I was ill too. It was a bit rough to be disregarded, but if they had taken the time to read my submission, they would have realised my work is something utterly different to Peter Robb’s.

Midnight in Sicily - Penguin Books UK

and those images along with Robb's writing really bring home the terrifying violence and power of the Mafia in Sicily . interesting flaw between details on the Mafia in Sicily to great descriptions and love to Sicilian culture and especially food. It is difficult to pick out larger themes amidst all the details, however the various threads do tie together as one goes on. Peter Robb has written a masterpiece detailing how La Cosa Nostra has invaded every part of Sicily's everyday life.I’m not entirely sure that the book’s byline (On Art, Food, History, Travel and the Cosa Nostra) really fit, as the parts that weren’t about the Cosa Nostra mostly took on the form of brief tangents or reporting of what Robb ate when he met such and such a person, and didn’t really bring anything particularly illuminating to the subject. When not focusing on Cosa Nostra and politics, there are various interesting asides into Sicilian cuisine, culture and literature. Hunchbacked, short and impassive behind a set of thick-rimmed glasses, Andreotti looks exactly like the kind of man whose bureaucratic exterior barely bothers to conceal a wily, even sinister, operator.