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The Italians, books
Street life in Pizzo, a seaport in Calabria: ‘Italians rarely get drunk. There is no straightforward word for hangover.’ Photograph: Alamy
Street life in Pizzo, a seaport in Calabria: ‘Italians rarely get drunk. There is no straightforward word for hangover.’ Photograph: Alamy

The Italians review – a foreign correspondent’s illuminating study

This article is more than 9 years old
Observer and Guardian correspondent John Hooper gets to the heart of Italy in his cliche-free account of the country’s character

Our houses are less clean than his grandmother’s poultry cage. Our diet is deplorable, while fish and chips is a dish that “makes you want to wash it with detergent before eating”. So said a Portuguese writer named João Magueijo in a recent book lamenting the worst of Britain.

The “fancy that” school of expat mockery is a long tiresome tradition. And yet there is always a requirement on the foreign correspondent to simplify and amplify for the reader.

John Hooper refuses to succumb to easy cliche while explaining the best and worst of Italy. Mixing the amusing titbit (in Rome, gnocchi is to be found in restaurants only on Thursday) with the big picture, he provides context for the question that perplexes the occasional visitor: how come a country that has produced Berlusconi, “bunga bunga” parties, the mafia and an extraordinary bureaucracy is still so attractive?

Hooper, the Guardian’s man in Rome, divides his analysis of Italy into a useful set of subject headings – from the judicial system, to geography, to love, sex and the family, to religion. If there is a single unifying theme, it is suspicion. Italians, it seems, are reluctant to believe anyone, and certainly no home-grown institution.

Thus we learn that Vodafone has made a mint from a service called Alter Ego, which allows subscribers two phone numbers on the same sim card – one presumably for the spouse, the other for the lover. It is not available in other countries. Cheating in exams is rife, regarded as something between inevitable and laudable. Small wonder, the author notes, that even aspiring school teachers have been caught out. The head of the employers’ federation boasted to students that he was a “world champion” at what they call copiatura. Vices become virtues – and business opportunities. Thus the bigliettini, tiny crib sheets hidden about the examinee’s person, can be worn in a special cotton cartridge belt, called the cartucciera, supplied in shops. At the heart of it all is the concept of furbizia – having aims rather than principles. The word furbo usually has positive connotations; it is used variously, from getting even, being cunning, to queue jumping.

Hooper contends that in spite of their reputation for gregariousness, Italians often conceal what they think. Hand gestures are a device of obfuscation. He notes there are gestures for hunger, agreement, dissent, wedlock, furbizia, insistence, negation, voluptuousness and complicity. The guard is rarely lifted. Such is their restraint that Italians are not as prone to dancing as other Mediterranean societies and they rarely get drunk. There is no straightforward word for hangover.

Distrust lies at the heart of the judicial system. Truth is relative. One side’s verità is merely set against the other’s. In the end, who knows who is telling the truth? Long pre-trial hearings are followed by the case itself, culminating with an automatic right to two appeals. Only when the entire process is exhausted is the defendant considered “definitively convicted” or acquitted. On average that takes more than eight years, sometimes up to 15. Nobody emerges satisfied, but everyone takes comfort in the conspiracy theories that accompany the conclusion. The difficulty in getting to the truth, and in achieving convictions, underlies Italians’ obsession with wiretapping and other forms of “provable” surveillance. For journalists, lawyers and politicians, the right to bug someone’s phone is regarded as inviolable.

Yet, in one of the many quirks that make this tale so readable, Hooper points out that when Italians decide, en masse, to abide by a particular stricture they will. He notes: “Italians will not obey laws, yet they will adhere – and with steely rigidity – to conventions. Just look at the way people sunbathe. The majority of beaches look like something a North Korean commissar might have dreamt up.” Nobody predicted that when the smoking ban was introduced in 2005 it would be obeyed. But it was. “By some semi-miraculous process, a law had turned into a convention and everyone was ready to respect it.”

While distrustful of their own, Italians are more likely to show faith in foreign institutions. Hooper dwells on a side of public life since the second world war that can easily be forgotten – the staunch Atlanticism and anti-communism of the many Christian Democrat-led governments. Since the end of the cold war, that allegiance has been transferred to Brussels.

Now what? On this the author appears less confident. His book’s deadline came shortly after the election of Matteo Renzi, a young Florentine catapulted to the top. No Italy-watcher would be naive enough to vest in an individual the ability to reform a moribund politics or declining economy. However, perhaps something fresh may just be stirring.

The Italians is published by Allen Lane (£20). Click here to buy it for £16

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