La Bella Figura

"Beppe Severgnini is a journalist who is a household name in Italy. He’s written lots of popular books and is frequently on TV. He was the Italy correspondent for the Economist from 1996 to 2003. His book Ciao, America! An Italian Discovers the U.S. was a bestseller as was this book, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind . In it, he wittily examines the habits, eccentricities, and contradictions of Italians, also when it comes to politics. It has amusing things about Italians, like their attitude to red lights. It’s more folklore than the other books. Severgnini likes to explain to people in one country the culture of people in other countries. His most famous book is Italians but then there is another book called Inglesi which was in Italian and then translated into English. It was popular in the UK too, because everybody likes to see how foreigners see you! It’s very tight-knit. A large share of people still live in relatively small towns. There’s a famous quote—of uncertain attribution—which says: ‘We’ll never have a revolution in Italy. We all know each other.’"