'Europe ends at Naples and ends badly. Calabria, Sicily and all the rest belong to Africa.' -- Creuzé de Lesser, 1806

Mezzogiorno, by David Kerekes, this is a work of fact, fiction, fable and folklore spanning three generations of southern Italian family life.

No geographical map distinguishes Montefalcione as being different from any number of isolated mountain villages in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days, like other villages.

Yet Montefalcione in Campania is the setting for a unique meditation on family and the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author’s own family. The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella — a world lost to the changing face of the twenty-first century.

--------------------------------

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

David Kerekes is a co-founder of Headpress, the editor of the Headpress journal, and has written extensively on popular culture. He is co-author of the books See No Evil and Killing for Culture, and author of the book Sex Murder Art. Born and raised in Manchester, England, he now lives elsewhere.