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Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 476
ISBN-13: 9781559706285
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →After twenty years of living in Italy, Tim Parks, whom Joseph Brodsky has called "the best British author writing today," spent a full year following the fortunes--and misfortunes--of the Verona football--oops! soccer--club. Here is his rollicking report.
Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-07
Total Pages: 213
ISBN-13: 0802191150
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy. Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers to his home town, with a statue of the Virgin at one end of the street, a derelict bottle factory at the other, and a wealth of exotic flora and fauna in between. Via Colombare, the village’s main street, offers an exemplary hodgepodge of all that is new and old in the bel paese, a point of collision between invading suburbia and diehard peasant tradition. It is a world of creeping vines, stuccoed walls, shotguns, security cameras, hypochondria, and expensive sports cars. More than a mere travelogue, Italian Neighbors is a vivid portrait of the real Italy and a compelling story of how even the most foreign people and places gradually assume the familiarity of home. “One of the most delightful travelogues imaginable . . . so vivid, so packed with delectable details.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-01-23
Total Pages: 452
ISBN-13: 161145977X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football (which we Americans know as “soccer”) a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? After twenty years in the bel paese, Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of his hometown soccer club, Hellas Verona, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world’s most beautiful cities, and to get a fresh take on the conundrum that is national character. From Udine to Catania, from the San Siro to the Olimpico, traveling with the raucous and unruly Verona fans—whose conduct is a cross between that of asylum inmates and the Keystone Kops—Tim Parks offers his highly personal account of one man’s relationship with a country, its people, and its national sport. The clubs are struggling, as always, to keep their heads above water in Series A. The fans, as always, are accused of vulgarity, racism, and violence. It’s an election year and politics encroaches. The police are ambiguous, the journeys exhausting, the referees unforgivable, the anecdotes hilarious. And behind it all is the growing intuition that in a world stripped of idealism and bereft of religion, soccer offers a new and fiercely ironic way of forming community and engaging with the sacred.
Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-05-05
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0393348822
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The bestselling author of "Italian Neighbors" returns with a wry and revealing portrait of Italian life--by riding its trains.
Author: David Blixt
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2008-09-16
Total Pages: 596
ISBN-13: 0312382030
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Set in the early days of the 14th century, the exiled Dante and his eldest surviving son Pietro are invited to Verona, where political intrigue rules the day. His best friends are the eldest sons of the Montague and Capulet family, whose bitter and fabled feud is about to break out over the love of a woman in love with one and betrothed to another.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2010-09-01
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 1619021420
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).
Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-07
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 0802191142
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A “marvelous” Mediterranean memoir of an expatriate father raising his children in Italy—from the author of Italian Neighbors (The Washington Post). Tim Parks offers another lively firsthand account of Italian society and culture—this time focusing on all the little things that turn an ordinary newborn infant into a true Italian. When British-born Tim Parks heard a mother at the beach in Pescara shout to her son, “Alberto, don’t sweat! No you can’t go in the sea till eleven, it’s still too cold, go and see your cousin in row three number fifty-two,” he was inspired to write about parenting in Italy—which he was doing himself at the time after adopting the country as his own. In this humorous memoir, Parks offers an enchanting portrait of Italian childhood that shifts from comedy to despair in the time it takes to sing a lullaby. The result is “a wry, thoughtful, and often hilarious book . . . a parable of how our children, no matter what, are other than ourselves” (The New Yorker). “Glimpses of Italy that are fond, critical, pithy and penetrating.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Author: James Moor
Publisher: eBook Partnership
Published: 2013-09-01
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13: 190962604X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An Arsenal fan is forced to ditch his first love and switch allegiances to a new team. Handed a Foreign Office posting to Belgrade, James Moor gives up his season ticket and looks for a new Serbian team to support. Being a veteran of the Congo and Helmand Province war zones stands him in good stead for what follows. Having chosen Partizan over Red Star, James enters a scene awash with nationalism, xenophobia, and conspiracy theories. He lifts the lid on Serbian fan culture, Partizan's internal disputes, and violence between the club's own Grobari (Undertakers) supporters as well as with their hated local rivals. Moor attends matches among crowds of 50,000 and 2,000, and sees games interrupted by stadium fires at a club permanently at war with itself. And this is before former Chelsea boss Avram Grant takes over midway through a tumultuous season at home and in Europe.
Author: Jane Gardam
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2013-11-05
Total Pages: 169
ISBN-13: 1609451554
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“Far more than just another coming-of-age story” from the award-winning author of the Old Filth trilogy (Bustle). Jane Gardam’s marvelous stories of young girls on the threshold of womanhood—God on the Rocks and Crusoe’s Daughter—have delighted fans and critics alike. These “modern classics” are now joined by a novel that is equally fresh and genuine, comic and touching (The Independent). Jessica Vye introduces herself with an enigmatic pronouncement: “I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal, having had a violent experience at the age of nine.” A revered author has told Jessica that she is, beyond all doubt, a born writer. This proves an accurate prediction of the future, one that indelibly colors her life at school and her perception of the world. Jessica has always known that her destiny would be shaped by her refusal to conform, her compulsion to tell the absolute truth, and her dedication to observing the strange wartime world that surrounds her. What she doesn’t know, however, is that the experiences and ideas that set her apart will also lead her to a new and wholly unexpected life. Told with grace and inimitable wit, A Long Way from Verona is a wise and vivid portrait of adolescent discovery and impending adulthood. “A book to be judged by the highest standards.” —The Spectator “A brilliant, witty, and agonizingly true-to-life novel.” —The Times Literary Supplement “A fiercely funny and personal book.” —The Economist “The qualities for which Gardam is cherished (the quirkiness, the bright-eyed wonder at reality) are already apparent in this early work.” —Kirkus Reviews
