Imprint
- Hodder & Stoughton
Prose: non-fiction, Cooking, National & regional cuisine
Award-winning new history of Italy told through its food, by the author of the worldwide bestseller COSA NOSTRA
Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well The advertising industry tells us the answer lies in the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany - among sun-weathered peasants, and mammas serving pasta under the pergola. Yet this nostalgic fantasy has little to do with the real history of Italian cuisine.For a thousand years, Italys cities have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. So Italian food is city food, and telling its story means telling the story of the Italians as a people of city dwellers.
In DELIZIA! the author of the acclaimed COSA NOSTRA takes a revelatory historical journey through the flavours of Italys cities. From the bustle of Medieval Milan, to the bombast of Fascist Rome; from the pleasure gardens of Renaissance Ferrara, to the putrid alleyways of nineteenth-century Naples. In rich slices of urban life, DELIZIA! shows how violence and intrigue, as well as taste and creativity, combined to make the worlds favourite cuisine.
Praise for Delizia!
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'Mouthwatering...like lunch in the green hills above Lake Como, or dinner at the horseshoe bays of Sardinia, Dickie's book is sheer pleasure.' - Financial Times
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'Informs as well as enlightens...a clever and provoking account of Italy's history' - Guardian
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'Full of fascinating detail' - Independent
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'Important' - Observer
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'Like a really classy cook shop, Delizia! is stuffed with arcane culinary facts and gadgets, anecdotes, recipes and stories.' - Sunday Telegraph
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'A feast of horrors and delights...hard to fault: enlightening and consistently moreish' - The Sunday Times
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delightfully witty and anecdote-rich - Sunday Telegraph
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'witty history of Italy through food.' - Sunday Times
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John Dickie
John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London. He is an internationally recognised specialist on many aspects of Italian history and his books have been translated into well over twenty languages. His history of the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra, has sold a million copies. John has reached a multi-national television audience with a number of documentaries he has co-written and presented, including the six-part history of Italian food-a smash hit in Italy-which was based on Delizia! It is now on Amazon Prime as: Eating History - The Story of Italy on a Plate.
John has been a judge of the Pesto World Championships in Genoa. In 2017 and 2018 he was the host of the Pasta World Championships in Parma, sponsored by Barilla. In 2021 he hosted the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy in Milan.
In 2005 the President of the Italian Republic appointed him a Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della SolidarietA Italiana.
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