Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village Book

A year in the life of a remote southern Italian hill town, rich with local characters and strange, pagan-laced customs -- a place very different from the more gentrified northern Italy of Tuscany and Umbria. Award-winning travel writer and illustrator David Yeadon embarks with his wife, Anne, on an exploration of the wild, mountainous "lost world" of Basilicata, in the arch of Italy's boot. What is intended as a brief sojourn turns into a much longer and far more intriguing residency across the seasons. The Yeadons make a homein the ancient and alluring hill village of Aliano, where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renownedmemoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini during World War II for anti-Fascist activities. The Yeadons become immersed in Aliano's rich tapestry of people, traditions, and festivals, reveling in the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, the unique culinary delights of the region, and other enticing peculiarities of place. At the same time, they discover that much of the pagan strangeness that Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata. Evocative illustrations and richly colorful, often humorous tales of life in the hill village form the framework for Seasons in Basilicata.Read More