Italian Pleasures [Idioma Inglés] - Tapa dura

As irresistible as Italy itself, this evocative volume makes a charming bedside reader that lovers of Italy will turn to again and again.

’There is no short cut,’ as Edith Wharton once wrote, ‘to an intimacy with Italy.’ But the true pleasure of the country is evoked here in these 50 delightfully memorable pieces – published here for the first time. Expatriates David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell conjure up the delights and delicacies of Italy, where they now live. In alternating short essays of engaging prose, the authors vividly render the joys and surprises of their adopted homeland, from iced cappuccino, umbrella pines, and nuances of the language to trompe l’oeil, window shopping, and the names and shapes of pasta, among many other pleasures. Interspersed throughout are 17 excerpts from their favourite writers, adding yet another dimension to this captivating portrait of a country and its culture.

David Leavitt is the best-selling author of Family Dancing, The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, and other fiction.
Mark Mitchell, a scholar and writer, edited The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing, and with Leavitt coedited an anthology of gay fiction.