A Season with Verona: Travels around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals

by TimParks (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.33

  Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities, and to get a fresh take on the conundrum that is national character. From Udine to Catania, from the San Siro to the Olimpico, travelling with the fans and the players, this is a highly personal account of one man's relationship with a country, its people and its national sport. The club are struggling, as always, to keep their heads above water in Serie A. The fans, as always, are accused of vulgarity, racism and violence. It's an election year and politics encroaches. The police are ambiguous, the journeys exhausting, the referees unforgivable, the anecdotes hilarious. Behind it all is the growing intuition that in a world stripped of idealism and bereft of religion, football offers a new and fiercely ironic way of forming community and engaging with the sacred.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $25.71

  After twenty years in the bel paese, Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities, and get a fresh take on the conundrum that is national character.

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $14.42

  Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities. This is a highly personal account of one man's relationship with a country, its people and its national sport. A book that combines the pleasures of travel writing with a profound analysis of one country's mad, mad way of keeping itself entertained.