Italian Carousel: Scenes of Internal Exile

Although he has also lived in Russia, the USA and Britain, Navrozov asks where in homogenized and modernized Europe would the hardened individualist find refuge. His answer is Italy or, more specifically, Palermo, where for the moment his flight from social progress ends. The answer takes the reader in an uncompromising, occasionally eccentric but deeply personal and always entertaining travelogue from the author's first day in Rome to his last night at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, through Monte Argentario, Florence and the Maremma on to Venice and the Veneto and finally to the wilds of Sicily. To each of these destinations he is accompanied by his longtime friend and London gambling companion Gusov, a Russian photographer whose recent work was said by the British Journal of Photography to 'capture the essence of life.' He has produced a collection of fifty arresting images which serve to give another dimension to the author's ideas and impressions of the places evoked in the book.

Where can travellers go to find "pure" culture uninfluenced by American film, television, food, music and fashion? Russian-born Navrozov, who was educated in the United States at Yale and currently resides in Great Britain, takes us on a quest for cultural purity as he travels through Italy and visits cities like Rome Venice and Palermo. Short, impressionistic vignettes make up the 46 chapters on a variety of topics: cities, hotels, food, dress, friends and local atmosphere. In Palermo, Sicily, Navrozov satisfies his quest for purity at last: here, where " progress is retarded", many of the negative aspects of the modern world have not interfered. In addition, Navrozov loves the down-to-earth nature of the people, the lack of social pretense, and the exciting threat of the Mafia. Photographer Gusov, Navrozov’s friend, augments the author’s eccentric, highly opinionated, but always entertaining prose with arresting black-and-white images of Italian people and places. This is a refreshing, non-objective and persional take on one of the most written-about tourist destinations. Recommended for photography collections and large travel collections in public libraries. - Olga B.Wise, Austin Texas, Library Journal November 1, 2003