Customer Reviews

The Xenophobe's Guide to the Italians (Xenophobe's Guides - Oval Books)

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This book points out most of the italians habits (both the bad and good ones) with respect to family, food, love affairs, etc., giving a good picture of the italian people in an objective, but funny, way. I am Italian and I must admit that most of the attitudes described in the book are real, even if, sometimes, they are a bit exaggerated. I suggest this book to the people who already visited Italy and, therefore, they can easily understand what is a caricature and what is real. Finally, the book can be read in just a couple of hours (I read it during a flight from Holland to Italy).

There are many truths here (I should know, I'm Italian :-), some baffling generalisations (coming from somebody who's written well after the 19th century, that is), but overall the book is nice, informative, fun, full of irony and stylish. I laughed out loud quite often, and I was saddened by some spot-on characterisation of our defects just as many times.

This (small) book is good and funny, albeit if you can go pass it's stereotypical nature. As a matter of fact, all the Xenophobe's Guide "series" are of the same theme. Besides the funny side of the book I found it instructive that, from my observations, the book is also about day to day believes that people have and/or act on.

The Xenophobes guide to the Italians is a concise, humorous and informative look at the Italian people and their way of life. Among the topics that are mentioned are the importance of regional identities, the North/South divide, and the importance of the family in Italian life, as well as many other things.
The book uses stereotypes and generalizations to describe the people, so it cannot, and should not, account for all Italians. An example of this is in the section writing about how the rest of the world sees Italy - "The typical stereotype of the Italians is that of a noisy, passionate, scheming Mediterranean people, whose brilliance and inventiveness are unfortunately marred by laziness and unreliability".
Another interesting point noted in the book is how the national identity of Italian immigrants is stonger than in other nations, and as a result people such as Robert De Niro, Frank Sinatra, and Diego Maradona are considered to be as much Italian as their newly adopted country.