Mark Rotella

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Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

Mark Rotella; Frances Frenaye; Carlo Levi

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Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria

Mark Rotella

Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy -- a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian-American culture: in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy.Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and he Calabresi, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist destinations. A grandson of Calabrese immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit their ancestral home for the first time in thirty years; once there, they meet Giuseppe, a postcard photographer and an informal guide to all things Calabrese. Thus familiarized with Calabria, Rotella returns there at Easter time, and they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates him -- and the reader -- into its secrets: how to make soppressata and 'nduja; where to find hidden chapel and grottoes; and, of course, how to steal a fig without actually committing a crime.Stolen Figs is a model travelogue -- at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

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Other editions: Softcover - 2004