A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Characters by Tim Parks (9781559706285)
A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Characters (Book)
Tim Parks Release Date: 10 June 2002 Format: Hardcover Pages: 447 Publisher: Arcade Publishing ISBN: 9781559706285 ISBN-10: 1559706287
From Udine to Catania, from San Siro to the Olimpico, traveling with the fans and the players from the tip to the toe of Italy, Tim Parks offers a highly personal account of his relationship with a country, its people, and its national sport. Verona, recently elevated to the top-rank teams -- Series A -- is struggling to stay there. The fans, as always, are accused of vulgarity, racism, and violence. The police are ambiguous, the journeys exhausting, the referees unforgivable, and the anecdotes hilarious. In a world stripped of idealism and increasingly bereft of religion, Parks suggests that soccer offers a new, and fiercely ironic, way of engaging with the sacred. -- Combines the tension of cliff-hanging narrative with the pleasures of travel writing. -- Does for soccer what John Feinstein did for golf. -- A profound, insightful, and often hilarious analysis of one country's way of keeping itself entertained.