Description
A charming, informative personal history that blends the anecdotal, historical, and downright unusual
The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, Joseph Luzzi straddles these two perspectives in My Two Italies to link his familys dramatic story to Italys north-south divide, its quest for a unifying language, and its passion for art, food, and family.
From his Calabrian fathers time as a military internee in Nazi Germanywhere he had a love affair with a local Bavarian womanto his adventures amid the Renaissance splendor of Florence, Luzzi creates a deeply personal portrait of Italy that leaps past facile clich about Mafia madness and Tuscan sun therapy. He delves instead into why Italian Americans have such a complicated relationship with the old country, and how Italy produces some of the worlds most astonishing art while suffering from corruption, political fragmentation, and an enfeebled civil society.
With topics ranging from the pervasive force of Dantes poetry to the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi, Luzzi presents the Italians in all their glory and squalor, relating the problems that plague Italy today to the countrys ancient roots. He shares how his two Italiesthe earthy southern Italian world of his immigrant childhood and the refined northern Italian realm of his professional lifejoin and clash in unexpected ways that continue to enchant the many millions who are either connected to Italy by ancestry or bound to it by love.
Author: Joseph Luzzi
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 07/14/2015
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.4lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780374535391
Language: English
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