Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria

Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy -- a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during scorching summers. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian-American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy.

Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs -- named a Best Travel Book of 2003 by Cond Nast Traveler -- is a marvelous evocation of Calabria. A grandson of Calabrese immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella -- and the reader -- into its secrets: how to make a soppressata and 'nduja, and, of course, how to steal a fig without committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue -- at once charming and wise, and full of an earthy and unpretentious sense of life that now, as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
Published: 05/01/2004
ISBN: 9780865476967
Pages: 310
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.90d

Review Citations: New York Times 05/02/2004 pg. 28
Library Journal 09/15/2004 pg. 92