Midnight in Sicily: On Art, Food, History, Travel and la Cosa Nostra

My partner and I enjoyed an amazing week in Sicily in September . This book was my thank you gift: a colorfully illustrated and well presented overview of food, culture and attractions.

Ok. The main focus throughout is the mafia. A smattering of history, culture, food. Left me wanting more.

This book has it all...a travel book, FOOD!, and the omnipresent corruption of the Mafia in Sicily. Peter Robb has written a masterpiece detailing how La Cosa Nostra has invaded every part of Sicily's everyday life. First published in 1996, Robb updated this book in 2007.I lived in Sicily. Robb's descriptions of the marketplaces, the dusty heat that is Sicily are spot on. The Sicilians I lived with simply accepted the Mafia as a business...nothing more. But it is MUCH more.Peter Robb put into words the uneasy feeling I had while living there. I never quite knew what was going on...I never had that feeling in any other foreign country... It's a closed society and even though I speak both the Sicilian dialect of Italian and French (most Sicilians also speak French) I couldn't quite figure what residents were thinking.If you think that the mafia is "The Sopranos" or "The Godfather" trilogy...you don't understand the depth of the 'Ndrangheta and other Calabrese mafia. These are the mafia who were condemned by Pope Francis. When Pope John Paul II also condemned the "Ndrangheta in 1993, they blew up churches in Rome including the Pope's own St. John's Basilica.The entwining of the Roman Catholic church and the Mafia is as bizarre, evil, and corrupt as it comes..and I'm a Roman Catholic.Read this book and you will never see "Wiseguys" as interesting.

In their reviews, Michael Swisher and Marilyn Ferdinand's do an excellent job of describing this book. There's no point to replicating their work.I encourage anyone who is thinking about reading this book to do so, but to first read  The Leopard. Translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun. , a novel about Sicily that is consistently ranked among the world's 100 best novels of the 20th Century and which Peter Robb discusses extensively in this book.Although the professional reviews say that this book is not a travel guide, I disagree. Robb's comments on various aspects of Sicilian life are perceptive and, read in conjunction with other travel guides like  Top 10 Sicily (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides) , will prepare you well for a visit to the island. For those of a more intellectual bent, try  Blue Guide Sicily, Seventh Edition .As other reviewers have said, the Mafia are simply scum that should not be glorified. The real heroes of this book are the police investigators, magistrates and others who, knowing they would be assassinated, gave their lives for their country.

A sympathetic, personal, outside but informed view on life in Naples and Palermo, centered on a looping history of the Mafia trials and the collapse of the major Italian political parties. Unsurprisingly, a bit dark, not a travelogue. You might also consider "The Sack of Rome", that provides a sequel of sorts, as it documents the rise of Berlusconi, from a well-informed insider. The challenge with both is to put them into the broader context of Italian history and culture. The latter also raises intelligent and thoughtful parallels with developments elsewhere in Europe and, presciently, in the United States.

PETER ROBB HAS WRITTEN ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING BOOKS TO EVER COMEFORTH FROM ITALY.MR ROBB IS A SKILLED STORYTELLER IN THIS ALL TOO TRUE 'GIALLO'[CRIME STORY] OF POLITICS, MURDER, MAFIA, CULINARY, TRAVEL,ART AND HISTORY OF 'LA SICILIA' FEW HAVE EVER UNDERSTOOD.MR ROBB TAKES US ON A JOURNEY OF THE 'MEZZOGIORNO' AS NO AUTHOR BEFOREOR SINCE HAS DEIGNED TO UNDERTAKE.HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE,PLACES,POLITICS [ AND CUSTOMS ] THAT DEVELOPED INTO WHAT WE UNDERSTAND AS MODERN DAY SICILY IS RENDERED AND FLESHED OUT WITH THE ASTUTE EYE OF THE ARTFUL ARTESIAN AND HISTORIAN.FOR AN APPRECIATION OF MODERN DAY ITALY, HOW IT'S DESTINY BECAME ENTWINEDWITH THE INCUBUS OF CRIME THIS TOME IS A SCHOLARLY MUST READ AND NECESSARY PREREQUISITE.LUIGI B

A true classic. If you love this part of the world, and I truly do, you must read and own this book. Its explanation of the role of the USA is important and illuminating. Robb know his cultural history and writes clearly and honestly. A lot of what's wrong there is wrong in a similar way elsewhere too. You would have to spend years in the mezzogiorno to glean a small fraction of what this book has to offer. I have purchased at least six copies and have stopped lending this book.

I wanted to read this before a recent trip to Sicily. It is very good, but depressing at the same time. Much info about the Mafia, especially in Palermo. It was eye-opening and as we traveled, thoughts kept surfacing from the book. Not a light read.

The subtitle promises us art, food, history and travel but the essence of this book is an account of political corruption and the Mafia in Sicily, with one chapter also covering the author's time in Naples. It was originally occasioned by the author's return to Italy to cover the trial of Giulio Andreotti (seven times Prime Minister of Italy) on charges of being a member of the Mafia and of having ordered the murder of a journalist who was uncovering facts that were inconvenient to him.The structure of the book takes a theme, occasionally historical (as in the liberation of Sicily in 1943, in which the USA hands control to the Mafia in return for an easy ride for their troops in liberating the island), more often around the personal experience of the author (meetings with restaurant owners, life in Naples in a golden age, an interview with Marta Marzotto, or with the Mayor of Palermo), sometimes focussing on an important artistic or historical figure such as the Sicilian artist and communist Guttuso who figures quite a bit here but also has a chapter to himself starting with his funeral), or the novelist Leonardo Scascia (which starts with Peter Robb visiting the very unfriendly-to-visitors town of his birth and life as a schoolteacher).Always, underlying everything is political corruption and the Mafia - deaths and more deaths of good people and the never-ending and so far not completed struggle for law and order. The book conveys real anger and passion; and afterword dated 2007 to the main text, which dates from 1995/1996, tells us that everything changes and everything stays the same. I had no doubt this was true...Andreotti is found guilty of Mafia association, but only up to 1980, ie for a period of time that it is outside the statute of limitations and so he cannot be punished for what he has done....This typifies the way, at least in this book, that Italy works...

We visited Sicily and like many readers I bought this book thinking it would be an overview of the culture of Sicily. It is and is not. It provides a fascinating insight into Cosa Nostra and how it has affected the people of Sicily. The links between the Sicilian branch, the rest of Italy and the States is complicated and fascinating, and the extent to which it permeates and corrupts the whole of society, for example the part Andreotti played, is hardly comprehensible to the outsider. Peter Robb interweaves Sicilian and Italian art, literature and food into his story. What made this book special for me is that he is passionate about the place and understands and loves his subject, and lived there for long enough to know it really well. In the beginning one is immersed in Cosa Nostra names and killings but that seems necessary to understand how unremitting it must have been to live in that climate of fear. I was gripped by the book and didn't want it to end.

This is a great book. The general focus of the narrative is the evolution of the links between the Sicilian mafia and high politicians in Italy post WW2, and their culmination in the trial of ex-prime minister Andreotti in 1995. But it is far from being a dry and dusty chronological history. He weaves in lengthy asides on food, art, literature, geography, the nature of Naples and Palermo as cities, and more. The result is part cultural review, part travelogue, and partly a true story of corruption in high places. And wonderfully well written. I enjoyed it greatly.

A fascinating book based on the author's personal experience and research. As such, it is not strictly chronological but does give a very good background to anyone visiting not just Sicily, but also Italy's mainland. Explains a lot about the recent political and economic shenanigans in the country - pity it has not been updated right up to the present.

Every other reviewer gives this 5 stars, and I have to agree. I read this before my honeymoon in Taormina, Sicily, and found it unputdownable. Anyone interested in cuisine, the Mafia, corruption, EU / Italian politics, history and culture will find enough in this book to grip them. If, like me, you are fascinated by a lot of these variables then the book is fantastic. If the reviews lead you to think the book is too dark in tone, there are just enough positives to convince even a sceptic like Robb that perhaps Sicily (and indeed Italy) has confronted the cancer that is the Mafia. Cured itself, no, not yet.