The Guardian’s correspondent chooses books from Goethe to Michael Dibdin which reveal an ‘eternally deceptive’ country
Italy may seem like the most European of countries. Its capital was that of an empire that encompassed all but the remotest corners of the continent. Italy gave us the Renaissance and the foundations of modern western culture. Rome was the city chosen for the signing of the European Union’s founding treaty.
A lot of outsiders – content to visit its museums, to holiday in placid Umbria and cultured Tuscany – are happy to leave it at that. Yet there are parts of Italy and aspects of its society that are as exotic and unfamiliar as if they came from the Middle or Far East.
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