Midnight in Sicily: on Art, Food, History, Travel and La Cosa Nostra

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This narrative is itself an eclectic and sumptuous meal that- -through no fault of the author's—leaves the diner with a bitter taste in the mouth. Peter Robb must be a very interesting character to meet in person because he acquired some equally interesting friends in both Naples and Sicily, many of them it seems only one or two steps removed from the unsavory people in the news that he was writing about, and some of them not even one step removed, like the mafioso lawyer in Naples whose children required English lessons from Robb. His frank and damning description of both places and the depressing litany of other locations permanently disfigured by the misuse of State money over the decades, which was funneled into shoddy mafia controlled construction projects, will have you quickly making notes to avoid some of these places visited by Robb. It is sometimes complicated, as each and every person demands 100% of your attention and it is hard to catch up but it is a brilliant picture of the Mezzogiorno region. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages.

Midnight in Sicily (Peter Robb) – Roman Vingettes Midnight in Sicily (Peter Robb) – Roman Vingettes

I wanted to get to know a bit more of the history of the region and oh my gosh the book did not disappoint. I knew I had a few days of serious, unalloyed pleasure ahead of me when on page two of Midnight in Sicily I turned to my girlfriend and threw at her a breezeblock of facts about the Mafia. His second book, M, a biography of the Italian artist Caravaggio, provoked controversy on its publication in Britain in 2000. Peter Robb has written a masterpiece detailing how La Cosa Nostra has invaded every part of Sicily's everyday life.Spending fourteen years in southern Italy, Peter Robb recounts his journey into the Italian mezzogiorno - chiefly Sicily, but also Naples, and reveals its culture, history, art, literature and politics. There is exceptional insight, knowledge and articulation in both love of the good and tolerance and understanding of the bad. It was in these final pages that we discover the fate of the man at the centre of the book – and at the heart of Italian politics for decades – Giulio Andreotti. In fact one of her photographs, casually taken as an ordinary newspaper photographer in 1979 when covering Prime Minister Andreotti’s very public visit to Palermo, became a central part of Andreotti’s trial 16 years later. But running through it all, just as in Sicilian society, is the Mafia, and hidden even further and through several intermediaries behind them, is Andreotti, and a string of shadowy figures from Rome.

MIDNIGHT IN SICILY | Kirkus Reviews

New York Times wrote that " Midnight in Sicily is packed densely with events and characters that remain distinct even as Robb skips through time and place. Her monochrome pictures testify to a poverty that existed then in Sicily that looks like Victorian Britain but without the industry.

It suffered from being published in 2006 when the media tycoon had just lost an election and his political career seemed over. It certainly is but I was not prepared to the extent that it would focus on the Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and its pernicious grip on Italian politics and business as the lens through which to view Sicily. So it is that sort of book, with political and social observations of a narrator who is part of the tale. And the picture that emerges is shocking and dis-heartening even for a reader already intimate with many events of recent Italian history.