{"product_id":"the-dark-heart-of-italy-an-incisive-portrait-of-europes-most-beautiful-most-disconcerting-country-9780865477247","title":"The Dark Heart of Italy: An Incisive Portrait of Europe's Most Beautiful, Most Disconcerting Country","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1999 Tobias Jones immigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he found a very different country: one besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia. \u003ci\u003eThe Dark Heart of Italy\u003c\/i\u003e is Jones's account of his four-year voyage across the Italian peninsula. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJones writes not just about Italy's art, climate, and cuisine but also about the much livelier and stranger sides of the Bel Paese: the language, soccer, Catholicism, cinema, television, and terrorism. Why, he wonders, does the parliament need a \"slaughter commission\"? Why do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a \"brothel\"? Most of all, why does one man, Silvio Berlusconi-in the words of a famous song-appear to own everything from Padre Nostro (Our Father) to Cosa Nostra (the Mafia)? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe Italy that emerges from Jones's travels is a country scarred by civil wars and \"illustrious corpses\"; a country that is proudly visual rather than verbal, based on aesthetics rather than ethics; a country where crime is hardly ever followed by punishment; a place of incredible illusionism, where it is impossible to distinguish fantasy from reality and fact from fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTobias Jones\u003c\/b\u003e studied at Jesus College, Oxford. He was on the staff of the \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e and of\u003ci\u003e The Independent on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e before moving, in 1999, to Parma, Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"North Point Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50330111082770,"sku":"9780865477247","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_793c46cd-2f21-4e49-b181-941e5a71ad38.jpg?v=1727792032","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-dark-heart-of-italy-an-incisive-portrait-of-europes-most-beautiful-most-disconcerting-country-9780865477247","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}