Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village - Hardcover

Yeadon, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006053110X ISBN 13: 9780060531102

Publisher: Harper, 2004

Synopsis

A year in the life of a remote Southern Italian hill town rich with local characters, strange pagan–laced customs, and very different from the more gentrified northern Italy of Tuscany and Umbria.

Award–winning travel writer/illustrator, David Yeadon and his wife Anne embarked on an exploration of the wild mountainous "lost word" of Basilicata in the arch of Italy's boot. What was intended as a brief sojourn turned into a far longer and far more intriguing residency across the seasons. The Yeadons made a home here in the ancient and alluring hill village of Aliano where Carlo Levi, author of the world–renowned book Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini during part of World War II for anti–fascist activities.

They became immersed in today's rich tapestry of people, lifeways, traditions, festivals, the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, unique culinary delights, and other enticing peculiarities of place. At the same time, they discovered that much of the pagan strangeness Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed here, still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata. Evocative illustrations and richly colorful, often humorous tales of life in their hill village form the framework for Seasons in Basilicata.

Described by one reviewer as "one of our best travel writers," David Yeadon has shifted focus in this book to a far more intimate portrait of a single uniquely intriguing place. Tim Cahill found Yeadon "a very congenial travelling companion," Jan Morris praised his books as "full of strange, moving and entertaining experiences," and Kirkus celebrated them as "big, vigorous and hugely entertaining."

About this title

About the Author

David Yeadon is the author of Seasons in Basilicata and the bestselling National Geographic Guide to the World's Secret Places. He has written, illustrated, and designed more than twenty books about traveling around the world. He lives with his wife, Anne, in Mohegan Lake, New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Intrigued by Carlo Levi's book on life in the Italian province of Basilicata, Christ Stopped at Eboli, the author and his wife, Anne, decided to live for a year in Aliano, the village where Levi was kept under house arrest by Mussolini for seven months in 1935–1936. In Levi's day, Basilicata, situated in the instep of Italy's "boot," was a place of poverty. Unlike Levi, however, British travel writer Yeadon (The World's Secret Places) was there to "live happily with Anne, learning, and generally have a spanking good time dining on all those gorgeous porky products and homemade olive oil and wines and wild game and pasta galore." In his entertaining book, he describes how he did just that, renting an apartment with a terrace overlooking the village square, making friends who enjoyed serving him sumptuous meals, learning how wine and olive oil are made and investigating the local superstitions. He tries to find out from the older inhabitants what life was like in the 1930s, but they are reluctant to talk about it, claiming that they are better off than they were. But Yeadon doesn't dig too deeply: finding it hard to reconcile his experiences with Levi's bleak portrayal of conditions in Basilicata, Yeadon concentrates instead on the comradeship and good food. Illus.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 006053110X
• ISBN 13: 9780060531102
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 480