Book description
An essential guide to the strange, sometimes sinister culture of
contemporary Italy. In 1999 Tobias Jones travelled to Italy, expecting
to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign
visitors and famous writers. Instead, he discovered a very different
country, besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia,
where crime is scarcely ever met with punishment. Now, in this
fascinating travelogue, Jones explores not just Italy's familiar
delights (art, climate, cuisine), but the livelier and stranger sides
of the bel paese: language, football, Catholicism, cinema, television
and terrorism. Why, he wonders, do bombs still explode every time
politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home
as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a 'brothel'? And why do
people warn him that 'Clean Hands' only disguise 'Dirty Feet'?
Tobias Jones was born in Somerset in 1972. Having graduated from
Jesus College, Oxford with a double first in English and History, he
spent a year framing and selling antiquarian maps in a bookshop in
Bloomsbury. He then joined the editorial team of the London Review of
Books, before becoming a staff writer for the Independent on Sunday.
In 1999 he emigrated to Italy, from where he has worked as a freelance
journalist, writing essays and articles on Italy for Wallpaper,
Prospect, Vogue, the Guardian, the LRB and the Independent on Sunday.
He has since returned to the UK and his new book, Utopian Dreams, was
published in 2007
