One of my favourite books, I've just re-read it for the third time (I've got an appalling memory, so it almost reads like new each time if I allow enough time to pass). I am trying to get a trip to Sicily organized for April. I thought this would help set the scene, though I am more interested in the volcanoes and food than the mafia. Anyone read it? That being said, these are perhaps less of these than I would have liked. While I greatly enjoyed the book, I was expecting more of such writing rather than a continual return to the pernicious shadow of Cosa Nostra. The book could be said to be more a history book on the Mafia than a piece of travel writing on Sicily and its people. But then again perhaps the constant return of Robb to a dark subject matter reflects his view of the Sicily he found. For perspective. Levi’s description of the part of southern Italy to which he was exiled under Mussolini is a reminder of the appalling poverty from which many Italian families emerged during Italy’s “economic miracle”, little more than 50 years ago. Also a good antidote to the stereotype of “Catholic Italy”: “There’s no grace of God in this village,” says its drunken priest. “I say my mass to empty benches.”

Midnight in Sicily (Peter Robb) – Roman Vingettes Midnight in Sicily (Peter Robb) – Roman Vingettes

The entwining of the Roman Catholic church and the Mafia is as bizarre, evil, and corrupt as it comes..and I'm a Roman Catholic. It is eternally deceptive; a country in which much is said by means of symbols, or simply left unsaid. So, with the possible exception of the last, the books that follow are ones that scratch at the reassuring surface of Italian life to get at the infinitely more fascinating reality below. None more purposefully than … One of Letitzia’s pictures later came to national attention. At his trial in 1993, a photo taken of Andreotti standing next to Nino Salvo, a high-ranking mobster associate, was the sole piece of concrete evidence that Andreotti knew Salvo, which Andreotti flatly denied. Readers hitherto unaware of Andreotti and his fate can turn to Midnight in Sicily for further information, but can expect no comforting answers at the end of their reading.The thing that is great about this book is the language. The topic is a bit grim, but the language is just enchanting. A look at the post-war rise of Cosa Nostra and its intertwining with Italian politics (what with most of the Government’s ministers apparently being either a part of or closely tied with the group), this was an interesting although sometimes confusing book. Overlapping words: Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily and Leonardo Sciascia's Detective Stories in Italics". Swinburne Research Bank . Retrieved 6 May 2015. A fascinating insight into Sicily and the Cosa Nostra, particularly the political influence of Andreotti. The extreme violence of the 1970's and 80s reads like fiction.

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb | Goodreads

The art and literature of the south also feature heavily. The artist Renato Guttuso’s story is emblematic in more that just one way. His La Vucciria is not only considered the image of Palermo and its most famous market, but also Sicily and its way of life in general. But Guttuso is also connected to the Rome of Andreotti and the Christian Democrats. The description Robb provides of the end of Guttuso’s life is, like most of the tales with which Robb furnishes his book, extremely interesting, deeply unsettling and without a clarifying conclusion. That’s because there isn’t one, or at least it hasn’t been written yet. La Vucciria (1974), Renato Guttuso. This book is a pretty comprehensive account of the development, changing nature and widespread influence of the main groups of organized criminality in Italy (Mafia with origins in Sicily, and Camorra in Naples) after WWII. Much of the history is taken from firsthand accounts and documentation, some of it used in famous Mafia trials. 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. Electrical appliances exploded and caught fire for no apparent reason. I’m sure the fact that the train line passes so close to the town must have something to do with it, all of that static electricity must affect the town. The case of Giulio Andreotti is an example well explained by the author, with overwhelming and detailed evidence.On the other hand, some parts are extremely interesting, and the author manages to highlight with great effect the intimate relationship and deep links between organized criminality and the upper echelons of Italian politics, including the government itself and the prime minister himself. I lived in Sicily. Robb's descriptions of the marketplaces, the dusty heat that is Sicily are spot on. The Sicilians I lived with simply accepted the Mafia as a business...nothing more. But it is MUCH more. I was happy to get the opportunity to journey to Palermo by train and walk around for a few hours to give me my first taste of the city.

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

I had thought of leaving this out on the grounds that it tells us more about Goethe than Italy. 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”. A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity. Where else in Europe do you find an organised crime syndicate like the ‘ndrangheta, which uses rites that are grotesque parodies of Roman Catholic liturgy? Or a town such as Matera where, until the 1950s, much of the population lived in caves? Or a dish like pajata , made from the only partially cleaned intestines of milk-fed calves? Where but in Italy could an entire sentence-worth of meaning be conveyed with a single hand gesture?

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Only partly about Sicily; more an exploration of the corrupt dynamics of Christian Democracy enlivened by digressions into the art, literature and gastronomy of the Mezzogiorno. Ideally read in conjunction with Paul Ginsborg’s masterly History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988. 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... As an introduction to post-war Italy, to the country as well as its politics, it can have few equals Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement Rocca di Capraleone is an ugly, mostly industrial city near the coast famous for being the birthplace of Maria Grazia Cucinotta, a well known Italian model and actress. Not Messina, as she often tells the press; I wonder why she would lie about this? I guess because Rocca isn’t as beautiful or romantic as Messina.