Bøger af Sari Gilbert

It's a nice place to visit but would you really want to live there? Sari Gilbert, who has lived for close to 40 years in what many have called the Eternal City, answers with a resounding "yes"- but it's a "yes... but". A native New Yorker who moved to Rome after finishing graduate school and then became a journalist, Gilbert's book "My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City" describes what life is really like in the Italian capital: to sum it up, "fascinating, and delightful, but not at all easy". Many foreigners have moved to Italy, but relatively few have decided to stay on for the rest of their lives, unless they are married and have put down family roots. Gilbert uses her own particular status - as an attractive and single woman, as a journalist for major U.S. and Italian news organs, and as an American - as a magnifying lens to examine the various aspects of Italian and Roman life. She gives us an unveiled view of the country's politics, its stifling bureaucracy, its contradictory social customs, everyday concerns and gastronomical habits. Gilbert also takes us through the less pleasant phases of recent Italian history: Mafia, terrorism, the assassination attempt on the life of the first (but not the last) non-Italian Pope, the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi. In the process, we learn what it is like to work in Italy as both a foreign correspondent and a local reporter for Italian newspapers. Even more intriguing perhaps, Gilbert sheds light on what love affairs are really like with Italian men, be they average Giuseppes or high-placed movers and shakers.

It is 1980 and Clare Phillips, a beautiful, young British free-lance journalist based in Rome and her friend Daniel, a young American priest, visit an Etruscan tomb and make a macabre discovery. Clare realizes that a kidnapping has taken place and, with Daniel's grudging help, decides to do some investigating on her own.With a background in archeology, Clare is also covering the announced purchase by the Vatican's Etruscan Museum of a valuable antique Greek wine cup - a kylix - painted by the world famous Euphronius. A major exhibit has been planned. The purchase turns out to have been engineered by an unscrupulous Argentinian archbishop and a greedy French diplomat, and Clare - with Daniel's help - uses her contacts to dig deeper. She gets advice from fellow journalists, including Luca, an Italian investigative reporter with whom she'd had a brief passionate fling, works closely with several of Italy's top investigating magistrates. But her determination to make a name for herself leads her repeatedly to strike out on her own.Gradually several things become clear. First, that the purchase may have been made with "dirty money", and second, that a avaricious Christian Democratic politician and his henchmen may also be involved in the kidnapping. Then, once the identity of the kidnapping victim becomes known, that the two events are inextricably linked.Clare's ambition puts her at risk on more than one occasion. The kylix will leave a bloody trail and the story, spun out against its Roman background, highlights the life of a dynamic foreign journalist in Italy.