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La Bella FiguraStock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionJoin the bestselling author of Ciao, America on a lively tour of modern Italy that takes you behind the seductive face it puts on for visitors--la bella figura--and highlights its maddening, paradoxical true self
The highway: in America, a red light has only one possible interpretation--Stop An Italian red light doesn't warn or order you as much as provide an invitation for reflection.
The airport: where Italians prove that one of their virtues (an appreciation for beauty) is really a vice. Who cares if the beautiful girls hawking cell phones in airport kiosks stick you with an outdated model? That's the price of gazing upon perfection.
The small town: which demonstrates the Italian genius for pleasant living: "a congenial barber . . . a well-stocked newsstand . . . professionally made coffee and a proper pizza; bell towers we can recognize in the distance, and people with a kind word and a smile for everyone."
The chaos of the roads, the anarchy of the office, the theatrical spirit of the hypermarkets, and garrulous train journeys; the sensory reassurance of a church and the importance of the beach; the solitude of the soccer stadium and the crowded Italian bedroom; the vertical fixations of the apartment building and the horizontal democracy of the eat-in kitchen. As you venture to these and many other locations rooted in the Italian psyche, you realize that Beppe has become your Dante and shown you a country that "has too much style to be hell" but is "too disorderly to be heaven." Promotion infoWATCHING THE ENGLISH for the Italians... an affectionate, witty guide to Italians at their most enchanting and infuriating Author descriptionBeppe Severgnini is a columnist for Italy's largest-circulation daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera and covered Italy for The Economist from 1993 to 2003. He is also the author of the international bestseller Ciao, America! Beppe lived in London for more than fifteen years and is a self-confessed Anglophile. He now lives with his family in Crema on the outskirts of Milan. |