Books
Mario Desiati, Il paese delle spose infelici, Mondadori:
Apulia in the eighties, Domenico and Francesco, called Zazà and
Veleno by everyone, are two young boys who play among ravines and
trulli with a band of memorable characters with whom they will grow
up. The two come from very different families: Zazà lives in a working-
class neighborhood, Veleno is a daddy's child. Over the years they will
come across Annalisa, a girl with a very unusual life and extraordinary
beauty. Annalisa frequents the crazy people of the village, she dresses
out of fashion, she only talks with very old men and she carries
terrible rumors that the events seem to confirm dramatically with the
passage of time. Yet her unique charm seems to haunt like a curse the
two friends, to whom life has planned a series of misadventures and
sensational turns of events. A vintage Apulia for an intense and
compelling novel.
Carlo D’Amicis, La guerra dei cafoni, minimum fax:
Summer 1975. In a village on the Salento coast, the war that opposes
wealthy children to the children of fishermen, shepherds and peasants
is renewed: the so-called peasants. To declare and feed this conflict is
the fourteen-year-old head of the lords, who is named Angelo, but
whose nickname bears the sign of the champion and wickedness:
Francisco Marinho ( a robber Brazilian footballer of the time),
otherwise known as the Evil One. Obsessed by the hatred for the
peasants, Francisco Marinho fights in the name of social order, class
division, historical continuity. But when, due to a tragicomic
misunderstanding, in his vision of the world takes over a hint of
compassion - or perhaps affection, or perhaps love - towards a young
peasant girl, the separation between good and evil begins to blur.
Around him, the symptoms of a new season: where the prestige or
misfortune of being gives way to the arrogance of having. The war of
the peasants will no longer be a clash between the ranks that reaffirm
their own nature, but a struggle of conquest, climbing, collective and
inner disorder. A metaphor, through a microcosm of indemnified
children, of the collective change that in those years transfigured our
country, the new book by Carlo D'Amicis is a chivalric poem and social
satire, a novel of formation and divertissement pulp, a tragedy of the
ancient bourgeoisie and comedy of modern Italy.
Come il Vino Ti Cambia la Vita
There is also a piece of Puglia in the stories of rebirth, courage and return to the land told by Laura Donadoni, international ambassador of Italian wines, in her book " Come il vino ti cambia la vita" (Cairo Editore).Among the six "extraordinary" producers, who have chosen with courage and determination the enogastronomic and cultural richness and beauty of the territories, the salentine Claudio Quarta, former geneticist researcher and pharmaceutical businessman, for the last fifteen years now a successful winemaker with three wineries in the " exciting South ": two are in Salento-Tenute Eméra in Lizzano and Moros in Guagnano and one, Cantina Sanpaolo, in Irpinia.
Terranima
Puglia, mild places, rituals, earth and soul: Photographic journey by Angelo Saponara and Nini Tarantino
Tiny and minor Apulias, archaic and marginal, everyday Puglie, peripherical and secondary compared to postcards, magazines and oleographs set up for tourism fairs. But it is not a Puglia in a minor or marginal tone that emerges from this book to be "seen" and "listened", but also to "taste" for its explosion of colors and atmospheres that animate our land.
Flavors of Puglia- By Nancy Harmon Jenkins
The report of the gastronomic journey made in Puglia by the writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins in the autumn of 1995. In 262 pages it collects the best of traditional recipes of the heel of the boot.
La Ferocia- by Nicola Lagioia
A dynamic and intense book. Clara is magnetic. She lights up the rooms she enters or darkens them, depending on the storm that accompanies her. The last time they saw her alive, she was walking naked in the center of the Bari-Taranto state road. This is the story of two youths, a family, a city, the faults of fathers nestled in the weakness of their children, a world where money can fix everything until the precise moment in which it is already too late. In the center there is a woman's body closed in the gaze of all those who believed they could own it.
