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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Their ancestors came from all over the early Mediterranean to the wide bay and its islands, shadowed by a dormant volcano. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they made a great and terribly human city.
'Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples ranges across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greek landings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival thirty-something years ago. In 1503 Naples became the Mediterranean capital of Spain's world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only by Paris and Istanbul, an extraordinary concentration of military power, lavish consumption, poverty and desperation. As the occupying empire went into crisis, exhausted by its wars against Islamists in the Mediterranean and Protestants in the North, the people of Naples paid a dreadful price. Naples was where in 1606 the greatest painter of his age fled from Rome after a fatal street fight. Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio found in its teeming streets an image of the age's crisis, and released among the painters of Naples the energies of a great age in European art? until everything erupted in a revolt by the dispossessed, and the people of an occupied city brought Europe into the modern world.' (From the publisher's website.)
Notes
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Dedication: IM/ Franco Belgiorno-Nettis/ Puer Apuliae
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Epigraph: Mendicus Exul in Deversorio Graecae Urbis/ Iacerem Desertus
Vvuie che facite/'Mmiezz' a la via?
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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An Accumulation of Reality
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 18 November no. 5668 2011; (p. 8)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Dark Side of the Street
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1-2 January 2011; (p. 25)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Neopolitan Dreams
Max Oliver
(interviewer),
2010
single work
interview
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , November vol. 90 no. 4 2010; (p. 44) -
Non-Fiction Reviews
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 27 - 28 November 2010; (p. 25)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
A Strange and Singular Hymn
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 27 November 2010; (p. 19)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose
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Shadow Play
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , November no. 62 2010; (p. 58-59)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Always Naples: Peter Robb's Passion
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 20 November 2010; (p. 22)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Stepping Up for His City
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 20 - 21 November 2010; (p. 23)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Untitled
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , November vol. 90 no. 4 2010; (p. 37)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
A Strange and Singular Hymn
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 27 November 2010; (p. 19)
— Review of Street Fight in Naples : A Book of Art and Insurrection 2010 single work prose -
Naples on His Mind
2010
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Age , 6 November 2010; (p. 20-21) The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 November 2010; (p. 30-31) -
Neopolitan Dreams
Max Oliver
(interviewer),
2010
single work
interview
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , November vol. 90 no. 4 2010; (p. 44)
Awards
- 2011 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
- 2011 shortlisted Indie Awards — Nonfiction
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Naples,
cItaly,cWestern Europe, Europe,