In 1981 Tim Parks moved from England to Italy and spent the next thirty years alongside hundreds of thousands of Italians on his adopted country’s vast, various and ever-changing networks of trains. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians – conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants – Tim Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive. He explores how trains helped build Italy and how the railways reflect Italians’...
Travels around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals. 'Delves into the very essence of being a fan, while seamlessly exploring Italian history, politics, culture and society,' Guardian Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the...
'I recommend his book to all those who are fed up with accounts of roughing it agreeably in Tuscany and similar junk that scarcely scratches the surface of the real Italy' - Daily Telegraph "Am I giving the impression that I don't like the Veneto? It's not true. I love it. But like any place that's become home I hate it too." How does an Englishman cope when he moves to Italy - not the tourist idyll but the real Italy? When Tim Parks first moved to Verona he found it...