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

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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. This book has it all...a travel book, FOOD!, and the omnipresent corruption of the Mafia in Sicily. Peter Robb has written a masterpiece detailing how La Cosa Nostra has invaded every part of Sicily's everyday life. First published in 1996, Robb updated this book in 2007. 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.

Midnight In Sicily - Macmillan Midnight In Sicily - Macmillan

urn:lcp:midnightinsicily0000robb_l6k9:epub:f5af38b2-b7b4-42d3-93b8-176a8cb81290 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier midnightinsicily0000robb_l6k9 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t87j4734c Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780312426842This book is one of the very best I have read on an aspect of Italian life and politics.(The other is Christ Stopped At Eboli) I am going to read it again, as some of the detail is fading from memory. Robb, a long-term ex-pat writes seriously about the underbelly of Italian life, but also conveys hislove and respect for the country, its traditions and food especially! 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. If you have an existing knowledge of the Sicilian Mafia and of general Italian history since 1945 then this book is a treat, adding as it does a context for those incredibly turbulent decades through to, well, through to the present.

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb - Publishers Weekly Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb - Publishers Weekly

Mostly I was left with a vague sense of how corrupt it seems Italian politics are, that ex-Prime Minister Andreotti was extremely dodgy (to say the least – Berlusconi seems a choirboy in comparison) and that I need to look elsewhere if I want to read about Sicilian food. 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? Big refrigerated lorries carried off the entire catch every morning before dawn. Shellfish, however, abounded. They were for the locals. There were glossy mussels, sleek brown datteri di mare, sea dates who lived inside narrow holes they burrowed in the soft yellow tufa below the waterline, cannelicchi, which were Chinaman’s fingernails, pipis, taratafoli, vongole, others whose names eluded me, though not the memory of their shape and flavour, the smooth mottled shells and the dark grooved ones. That being said, it cannot be doubted that the detailed narrative shines a very illuminating light on a host of figures who deserve opprobrium. Robb centres on Giulio Andreotti, several times Prime Minister of Italy and his associations with various corrupt, murderous ‘Men of Honour’ from Michele Sandona who caused the largest banking crash in Italian history, to Shorty Riina, a corpulent brutal butcher of a man, who all but waged war against the Italian state in the early 1990s as he attempted to bend the entire Mafia and Italian government to his will. The central place of Andreotti in the book works very well, once one becomes used to the way the narrative jumps around, providing an insight into how interlinked with crime key political players were. 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.I enjoy travelling by train, it is comfortable, reasonably inexpensive and easy to do, especially in Italy. It’s a good idea to travel in Sicily by train as you can see a fair amount of the countryside as the line takes a coastal route, but for a few moments in the odd tunnel, you get primarily uninterrupted views. It’s a little slow, but today I’m not in a hurry, so I’m happy to look out the window and soak up the sunshine. 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 … I pass by other places I’ve vaguely heard of and seem familiar yet merely name to me like Tusa, Acquadolce and Finale. Then there is Cefalù, the famous beachside resort town from ancient Greek times. There are endless beachside villas, fishing boats and ruins left behind from long-departed Greek and Roman tourists.