Fleeting Rome: In Search of La Dolce Vita

Blurb

Fleeting Rome: In Search of La Dolce Vita is a posthumous book by Italian Jewish writer and painter Carlo Levi, which collects a number of his writings: correspondence, documents, photographic material from his exhibition catalogues, mainly extracted from the Italian State Central Archive, but also from other sources, such as the Collection of Manuscripts by Modern and Contemporary Authors at the University of Pavia, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli is preserved.
The book is a portrayal of everyday life in Rome from the end of World War II to the student movements of the 1960s. Levi skilfully and lovingly sketches a portrait of the Capital city and of its inhabitants through changing seasons and changing times. The author revels in the riotous celebrations for New Year and the many festivals through the year, and rejoices in the beauty of the city in the early morning mist. He introduces a civil servant who spends his days collecting wild asparagus, a peasant who wishes to be a writer, a writer who prefers football to talking about literature and thieves who masquerade as policemen.