Tobias Jones

This book was written in 2003 and probably needs updating, since the current affairs in Italy may be slightly less current almost 25 years later. In 2024 I would have been bored by the chapters on how justice worked in Berlusconi's Italy. THIS year, it's a playbook introducing readers to Trump's USA and how fascism deals with political crime and rampant corruption (basically, by encouraging it for the benefit of the politically corrupt).

The chapter on football (soccer, calcio) is also show more interesting with the World Cup currently in progress right under our North American noses. show less

Blood on the Altar, on its surface a detailed account of the disappearance of 16-year-old Elisa Claps on September 12, 1993, in Potenza, in southern Italy, is equal parts cultural critique and true crime expose. The investigation that ensues upon Elisa's failure to return home on that fateful Sunday morning is astoundingly shoddy. Advancing at a glacial pace and impeded at every turn by officials who seem to have something to hide, it stumbles and sputters as it encounters one roadblock show more after another. Various theories, both plausible and absurd, are brought forward to explain Elisa's disappearance, but the family is convinced the person to blame is Danilo Restivo, a young man several years older than Elisa who was supposed to meet her that morning and by all accounts was the last person to see her alive. Restivo, an oddball loner with a hair fetish, has no reasonable explanation for what happened after he claims to have left Elisa, and yet to the Claps family's astonishment and frustration Restivo is coddled and protected by those in positions of power, and never fully called upon to account for the crime they are sure he committed. Years pass and Elisa remains missing, though it seems there is a false sighting or bogus lead every other day. The Claps family's agonies do not diminish. Then the scene shifts to Bournemouth, in Dorset, England, where Restivo has moved and where Heather Barnett, a mother of two and Restivo's neighbour, is brutally murdered. Tobias Jones, author of The Dark Heart of Italy, is as much an expert on Italy as any outsider can be and has written a riveting story of a criminal cover up and justice denied. show less

Had this book a while and read it while on a recent holiday in Italy. Found parts of it funny and witty and well-written throughout. Particularly enjoyed the chapters on Italian soccer, media, politics and the analysis of the ills of the Italian economy despite having an extraordinary voter turnout at elections. From an Anglo-Saxon perspective, as the author has, this is a testament to there clearly being something wrong with the place. Yet he complements the architecture, the geography, the show more food and drink, the beauty, the language and the regional dialects while acknowledging the inherent regional disparity, such as prevails in England also. He does acknowledge his errors in the conclusion by noting that the voter turnout could be a reaction to the reaction against Communism and the threat to democracy after WW2 which voters protect hence the tendency to still elect a strong leader in the form of Berlusconi. show less

If you are after one of those sappy 'how I moved to Italy and lived the good life and laughed at the funny locals' stories, this is not the book for you.

Jones looks beyond the cliches, and uses his insights as an outsider to explore the contradictions of modern Italy - how a country of such beauty and passion can have so much wrong with it: crap television, corrupt leaders, corrupt citizens, obsessions with conspiracy theories. What saves this from being one monumental condemnation is that show more Jones obviously loves Italy, and for all its faults can't bear to leave it, knowing that there is also so much right with this amazing country.

Definately recommended as an antidote for those 'My Year in Tuscany' and other assorted shallow views of a complex and confusing country. show less