I’m really not the biggest fan of humour books.
Even less when they’re loosely connected short stories. In most cases they are
not particularly funny entertainment (at best) or not worth the paper they are
printed on (at worst).
This one is a little different. Far
from being a work of art it is, however, a work of genius. Or at least the work
of someone who knows his people and their habitat remarkably well.
In Italy a Bar Sport is not really a sports bar
in the Anglophone sense. It is just a token name that unimaginative owners give
to many of the unimaginative bars that characterize the country. Places where
the clientele (and often the pastries) hasn’t changed for years and where
anecdotes are passed on year after year until they become the stuff of legends.
And this is what this book is about at the end: the legendary tales of a bar’s
patrons and passer-bys, and at times it’s just what an Italian needs to read.
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