Silvio Berlusconi: 11 overwhelming questions
Silvio Berlusconi and the dark aspects of Italy: why writing a book about them? Silvio Berlusconi is “not just any old charlatan”, as the Nov. 21, 2011 Newsweek cover reads. As I have said time and again, Silvio Berlusconi’s ventennio (his twenty years in office) is a privileged observatory as far as the future of democracy is…
L’ordinanza fantasma – una storia molto siciliana
Ho letto sul Fatto Quotidiano del 17 agosto 2021 il bell’articolo di Selvaggia Lucarelli intitolato Noto, bellezza&monnezza. Ma se lo denunci t’insultano che descrive la sua vacanza da incubo in quella parte della Sicilia. Andando in ferie da alcuni anni in quei luoghi, non mi sono meravigliato per nulla. La bellezza barocca di quei posti…
Who Killed Giovanni Falcone? ‘Don’t say murder, don’t say kill, it was destiny, it was God’s will’
Twenty-eight years later: Falcone and Borsellino are victims of Totò Riina’s ‘negotiating by bomb’ strategy. Victims and martyrs indeed, and of course heroes. Nevertheless, I always have a bitter taste in my mouth every year at the celebrations, and the feeling is not because of the inevitable rhetoric. Hypocrisy lurks in the air: slowly, too…
Mediterranean Summer – on the road ‘write as you go’ diary of summer wanderings throughout Italy and Southern Europe
You’ll see no Rome, Florence, Venice or Taormina in this diary. Instead, I’ll take you to small unknown places of rare beauty often harbouring next to territorial or industrial diseases, ‘ugliness’ of various kind that makes Italy the cradle of the best and the worst. I was taken to these places in the long hot…
The Ballad of the Covid-19 Gaol, part 2
Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, May 4,2020 Outside in my street… .. there is no one around, of course. A blistening sun is shining on the terrace from where I am writing the weather is very warm, inviting you for a stroll downtown or a walk in the parks already green. But, still, there is no one…
The Ballad of the Covid-19 Gaol, part one
The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland Part 1: It all began where the streets have no name – looking back at one month of quarantine (Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Easter…
Mediterranean Summer, chapter 3 – West Sicily, Monument Valley by the sea. In the name of the law?
You’ll see no Rome, Florence, Venice or Taormina in this diary. Instead, I’ll take you to small unknown places of rare beauty often harbouring next to territorial or industrial diseases, ‘ugliness’ of various kind that makes Italy the cradle of the best and the worst. I was taken to these places in the long hot…
World Cup 2018 – out of the cup, into the mud: corruption,violence, beauty in Italian football
All the World is a football Stage Italian football is the mirror of our society: it means organized crime connections, both at top management level or at mafia and camorra rank; it means corruption, in match-fixing, slush funds creation and drug use; it means another weapon of mass consent in the hand of the demagogic political candidate.…
‘Trattativa stato-mafia’ verdict: The Berlusconi government’s deal with the devil confirmed, good omen for his recent official ‘rehabilitation’
‘In 2013 I wrote a whole chapter dedicated to the trattativa stato–mafia in my book about Berlusconi when just a few believed it had happened. Proud of it. A post will follow with the chapter. Thank you Di Matteo‘ is my first tweet after the sentence (trattativa stato-mafia means state-mafia negotiations). So here is the chapter in…
Mediterranean Summer, chapter 2 – Matera, the unbelievable ‘city of stones’: from dust to stardom
You’ll see no Rome, Florence, Venice or Taormina in this diary. Instead, I’ll take you to small unknown places of rare beauty often harbouring next to territorial or industrial diseases, ‘ugliness’ of various kind that makes Italy the cradle of the best and the worst. I was taken to these places in the long hot…
The book "Silvio Berlusconi's Italy" is finalist at the London Book Fair's International Literary Competition 'The write stuff'.Vittorio Vandelli’s prize winner book: “Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy”
