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A PLACE IN ITALY(Sinclair- Stevenson, 1992), an account of life in an Italian village. Illustrations and jacket painting by Clive Birch
All right, I suppose it was an attempt to climb onto a bandwagon set in motion by A Year in Provence, but this account of our first two years living in an Italian village has the merit of being a real reflection of a way of life that still survives in a country where the landscape has not yet been tamed. And it's fun. And maybe it should go into "biographical details", because it's also true.
Reviews:From the Observer:"Mawer, in one of the wisest of recent books on his adoptive
country, incisively combines astonished lyricism amid village moods
and seasons, with a firm grasp on the nature of that stubborn permanence,
that tranquil cussedness, with which Italy both embraces and shrugs
off the questing foreigner."
From the Times Literary Supplement:"...an affectionate, unhurried account of how two foreigners
fared in a village relatively unchanged by modern times... the good-humoured
book that has come out of their time in Avea is an evocative reminder
of how successful the Italians have been at hanging on to the pleasures
of the passing seasons."
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