Italian Ways – On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo - Softcover

Parks, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393348822 ISBN 13: 9780393348828

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014

Synopsis

Tim Parks s books on Italy have been hailed as "so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy. Parks begins as any traveler might: "A train is a train is a train, isn t it?" But soon he turns his novelist s eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino. Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, "To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?""

About this title

Review:

This mix of piercing social observation and undying affection for Italy is classic Parks.--Rachel Donadio

Parks really shines. He gives us a country that is as frustrating as it is endlessly fascinating.--Marjorie Kehe

Incisive [and] hilarious.--Alexander Aciman

Relaxed, humorous, meandering [and] charming.--Brigitte Frase

A movable feast to say the least.--Richard Eder

Fascinating [and] droll.... Parks [is] perhaps the most faithful foreign inamorato Italy has ever had.--Andrea Lee

Presents a picture of Italy you won't get from any tourist board... sympathetic and lively.--Micahel Upchurch

Tim Parks has reinvented the narrative of the train journey with an epic voyage into the essence of Italy itself. With a novelist's keen eye he mines absurdity and deep meaning from small, overlooked moments and gestures.--Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

This is the best book I've ever read about Italy. Never have I encountered a more insightful and hilarious insider/outsider portrait of the country at the center of Western civilization. Tim Parks should be given a villa in Rome and the title of English ambassador.--Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All

Engrossing, entertaining, and wonderfully revealing about the country and its people. It makes perfect armchair travelling - a delight from beginning to end.--David Lodge, author of Changing Places

Book Description:

A journey around Italy by train, full of humorous and insightful observations on what the railways and their travellers reveal about the country

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0393348822
• ISBN 13: 9780393348828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288