A Season with Verona - Tim Parks

"The football stadium excludes the world, reserves its mysteries for initiates. The TV cannot violate it, cannot even begin to catch it. It's a place of collective passion." Late September 2000. Hellas Verona, about to embark on another struggle against relegation, have lost their manager, half a team to the substitutes benches of Inter Milan, Fiorentina and Parma and their sponsors. The start of the football season has been delayed by the "grim athleticism and loathsome armchair nationalism" of the Sydney Olympics, and the owner has declared himself willing to sell the club as soon as he can find a buyer. Standing outside a closed ...  Read the complete review

Verona, the home of a play by some English writer can’t remember much some fighting and ends in tragedy. Not a bad act, that writer may be going somewhere. What’s more important thought is the football in the city, never mind some old story. Tim Parks is an English author. Some years ago he went to live in Italy, just outside Verona the setting for this story. He has a strong pedigree for writing both fiction and non-fiction, his novel Europa was short listed for the Booker prize and there is an impressive list of his other works. In Italy he works for a local university as well as his writing and tours of Europe. Not a bad job really. ...  Read the complete review