Old Calabria (Paperback)

by Norman Douglas (Author)
Key Phrases: flying monk, San Demetrio, Mother of God, San Giovanni (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'One of the most entertaining literary characters of his age, always unexpected. He lived and died an unpenitent nonconformist.' - The Evening Standard; 'Douglas is an excellent writer of works of travel: he has the necessary independence of mind, his loneliness, the face that gives nothing away. Old Calabria is a classic. His eye wanders from the road into the generalities of history and religion...but he never misses the precise contours of the country.' - The New Statesman; 'Almost everything a newcomer can require is here: Douglas turns easily from legend to natural history, natural history to notes on local wine..;' - Graham Greene, on Footnote on Capri, Sunday Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
An account of Norman Douglas's travels from village to village in Southern Italy around the turn of the century. From Gargano to Aspromonte, the natives - and even the dogs, are treated with a certain disdain as un-British comic types. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Hard Press (November 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1406937827
• ISBN-13: 978-1406937824
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,715,220 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Old Calabria Revisited, May 28, 2009

By	Pino Laricio - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old Calabria (Marlboro Travel) (Paperback)

'Old Calabria' is a travelogue reporting a British aristocrat's journey to Southern Italy and Calabria at the turn of the 20th century. For readers interested in Calabria, its real value lies in its depiction of how Southern Italy must have appeared to a foreigner's eyes at the time. Aside from the literary ability of the author, the book's subsequent success has depended more from the paucity of other accounts on Calabria in English than for any other intrinsic merit. Indeed, the book is much more interesting as an account of how Calabria has been represented by foreigners. There are a number of other accounts by English speakers on Calabria that are more nuanced and therefore more interesting. 'Old Calabria' reveals more about the common prejudices held by educated English speakers on Calabria than the region itself. In this book Norman Douglas perpetuates a number of mythologies regarding the South of Italy that are still current today as exoticising motifs, both in the negative and the positive: the "wildness" and "impenetrability" of Calabria, its deployment as a borderland between the great constructs called "Orient" and the "West" and so forth. For those people of Calabrian origins who have read the book in search of a sense of identity and feelings of self worth, this book may have loomed the larger, the greater their actual alienation from their origins. Rather than bringing them closer to an understanding of their identities, I would argue that the book has distanced them even further. It is through the very discourses that books such as these have perpetuated and legitimated in the English speaking world, that diasporic Calabrians have been alienated from themselves.

6 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Old Calabria, March 10, 2008

By	A. Garland "messenger" (Ocean Shores WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Old Calabria (Paperback)

The book was not as I expected and rather dated in content, so it was no help to me in my current search for information on Calabria. I returned the book according to the credit guidelines from Amazon but did not receive a credit.

Ann Garland