Peter Robb

The wild persona of the late-sixteenth-century artist, who captured the dark, violent spirit of his age better than any of his contemporaries, is well-documented in this biography of Caravaggio by the author of Midnight in Sicily. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

The Man Who Became Caravaggio

Chronicles the relationship of Italy's high-ranking politicians with the Sicilian Mafia, from the end of World War II to the present day. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Midnight in Sicily

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily. South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes.

On Art, Feed, History, Travel and la Cosa Nostra

Midnight In Sicily

Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Peter Robb's book ranges across nearly 3,000 years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greeklandings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival over 30 years ago.

A Book of Art and Insurrection

Street Fight in Naples

M is the name of an enigma. In his short and violent life, Michaelangelo Merisi, from Caravaggio, changed art for ever. In the process he laid bare his own sexual longing and the brutal realities of his life with shocking frankness. Like no painter before him and few since, M the man appears in his art. As a book about art and life and how they connect, there has never been anything quite like it.

Reissued

M: The Caravaggio Enigma

Delving into Brazil's baroque past, Peter Robb writes about its history of slavery and the richly multicultural but disturbed society that was left in its wake when the practice was abolished in the late nineteenth century. Even today, Brazil is a hation of almost unimaginable distance between its wealthy and its poor, a place of extraordinary levels of crime and violence. It is also one of the most beautiful and seductive places on earth. Using the art and the food, and the books of its great nineteenth century writer, Machado de Assis, Robb takes us on a journey into a world like Conrad's Nostromo. A world so absurdly dramatic, like the current president Lula's fight for power, that it could have come from one of the country's immensely popular TV soap operas, a world where resolution is often only provided by death. Like all the best travel writing, A Death in Brazil immerses you deep into the heart of a fascinating country. Vivid, obsessive and intelligent, this is an utterly enthralling account.

A Book of Omissions

A Death in Brazil

Deliciously sensuous and fascinating, Robb renders in vivid detail the intoxicating pleasures of Brazil’s food, music, literature, and landscape as he travels not only cross country but also back in time—from the days of slavery to modern day political intrigue and murder. Spellbinding and revelatory, Peter Robb paints a multi-layered portrait of Brazil as a country of intoxicating and passionate extremes.

In "Lives," an extraordinary writer encounters some remarkable people - and evokes their inner worlds. Peter Robb has an uncanny ability to get under the skin of his profile subjects: to show them in a new light, to home on what makes them tick. In Australia, these range from Alex Dimitriades to Ivan Milat, from Marcia Langton to Julian Assange. In Italy, Robb immerses the reader in the worlds of Fellini, Caravaggio, Calvino and Pasolini. Elsewhere, his portraits of EM Forster, Arthur Rimbaud, Peter Carey and Gore Vidal illuminate the real people behind the public image. Featuring much previously unpublished material, this is a fascinating exploration of human life in all its variety, glamour and idiosyncrasy.

Lives (Large Print 16pt)

Richard Blechynden was a surveyor, architect, and builder in early colonial Bengal. This volume and its companion (Sex and Sensibility) use 80 volumes of his diaries and other archival material along with anecdotes, extracts, and stories to recreate histories of everyday life. While Sex and Sensibility deals with larger issues of sexuality, concubines, and dynamics of households in colonial Bengal, this volume deals with life in Calcutta and the re-creation of a British identity. It explores issues like interactions between Europeans and Indians; race and tolerance; laws and legal system; and establishment of colonial city and government giving a bird’s eye-view of colonial Calcutta and its dynamic society. This book will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, gender studies, cultural studies, and British Imperialism, as well as those interested in biographies.

Richard Blechynden’s Calcutta Diaries, 1791–1822

Sentiment and Self

Richard Blechynden was a surveyor, architect, and builder in early colonial Bengal. This volume and its companion (Sentiment and Self) use 80 volumes of his diaries and other archival material along with anecdotes, extracts, and stories to recreate histories of everyday life. While Sentiment and Self explores issues like interactions between Europeans and Indians, race and tolerance, this volume focuses on the position of women, especially concubines, or bibis and their sexual and emotional relationships; the social milieu of the early empire; dynamics of household; contexts for cross-cultural contact and misunderstanding; the complexities of class, culture, and race; and the overlapping public and private life. It examines the domestic life, personal sensibilities, and private and public persona of the main diarist, Richard Blechynden. This book will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, gender studies, cultural studies, and British Imperialism, as well as those interested in biographies.

Sex and Sensibility

Peter Robb's journey into the dark heart of Sicily uses history, painting, literature and food to shed light on southern Italy's legacy of political corruption and violent crime. Taking the trial of seven-times Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, for alleged Mafia involvement as its starting point, Midnight in Sicily combines a searching investigation with an exuberant, sensual appreciation of this beautiful and bewildering island.

Peter Robb fa rivivere la figura di Michelangelo Merisi, passato alla storia come Caravaggio, e rifiuta le versioni classiche sulla sua morte, inserendola in un inquietante contesto di vendetta per motivi sessuali rivelando il nome di chi, con ogni probabilità, fu il mandante del suo assassinio.

M. L'enigma Caravaggio

Robb's extraordinary book about the great Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio is being reprinted for the exhibition of the artist's work that opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in November and later moves to Melbourne. The book contains dozens of pictures. This will be a cheaper edition than before (the notes have been removed) and will have an insert giving page references to pictures in the exhibition.'Written with the urgency of a detective novel - compulsively readable.' - John McDonald, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD'A book that recreates the mirror Caravaggio held up to nature with singular delicacy as well as passion and panache.' - Hilary Spurling, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

M, a Biography of European Painter Caravaggio

This fresh and up-to-date interpretation of India's rich and extraordinary history, written by a leading authority in the field, explores themes in ancient, medieval and especially modern India. Peter Robb's accessible study analyses India's civilizations, empires and regions through the ages, and now also evaluates present-day developments and opportunities. A History of India, Second Edition • examines the relationships between politics, religious belief, social order, environment and economic change • assesses, from c. 1860, British colonialism, Indian nationalism and nation-building, popular protest movements, religious revivals, and re-inventions of caste, community and gender • discusses long-term economic development, the impact of global trade, and the origins of rural poverty • has been revised in the light of the latest scholarship, and now features a Chronology as well as a fully reworked final chapter which brings the story up to the present day and carefully considers India's prospects and new roles in the world. Centred around clearly expressed and well argued topics, issues and explanations, A History of India remains the ideal introduction for all those who wish to understand the drama and vitality of India's past, its present situation and its future challenges.

A History of India

A History of India explores the principal themes that unify Indian history and offers the reader a sophisticated and accessible view of India's dynamics from ancient times, the Mughal Empire, the British Raj through post-1947 India. The book examines Indian politics, religious beliefs, caste, environment, nationalism, colonialism, and gender, among other issues. The book also discusses long-term economic development, the impact of global trade, and the origins of rural poverty. Peter Robb's clear, fluent narrative explores the interplay between India's empires, regions of rule, customs, and beliefs, and is an ideal starting-point for those with an interest in India's past and present.

Paul Durcan

For most of us Christmas is the season of huge helpings of good food, good drink, and with luck, good cheer, as the rituals of cracker-pulling, present-giving and happy or sulphurous family reunions fizzle and bang through the long afternoon. For anyone who has ever had too much of it, or felt out of it, or wanted to be out of it, or even succeeded in being out of it then been unexpectedly rescued by a good friend, this book-length poem contains a lifeline of humour and sanity in a world run seasonally mad. It is a funny, subversive, melancholy, self-mocking conversation between two men - Paul and Frank - in the top storey flat of a Dublin apartment block; a Stations of Christmas under the influence of "woman-hunger". Once read, Christmas Day itself will never be the same again. The volume also contains a second new work, "A Goose in the Frost", a tribute to Seamus Heaney on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Christmas Day

Partez à la rencontre des secrets les plus sombres de la Sicile Au sud de l'Italie, la Sicile - une île aux paysages arides, aux côtes magnifiques et aux trésors artistiques uniques - attire conquérants et voyageurs depuis des siècles. Au cœur de cette rare beauté, Cosa Nostra, la mafia sicilienne, sa violence et sa corruption, qui imprègnent chaque recoin de la vie insulaire. Au départ du fracassant procès à la fin des années 1990 de l'ancien Premier ministre Giulio Andreotti, accusé de multiples collusions avec la mafia, Minuit en Sicile emporte le lecteur dans une enquête haletante baignée de toute l'exubérance et l'envoûtement de cette île merveilleuse. Un plongeon au cœur le plus sombre de la Sicile, qui emprunte les voies de l'art, du voyage, de l'histoire et de la gastronomie pour l'un des meilleurs livres écrits sur l'Italie contemporaine, aussi révélateur de la société sicilienne que la lecture du Guépard à l'époque. Sensuel, fascinant et glaçant. CE QU'EN PENSE LA CRITIQUE Peu de livres racontent l'Italie de l'après-guerre de façon aussi remarquable. - Times Literary Supplement Achetez ce livre et lisez-le sans attendre. Minuit en Sicile est aussi riche que son sujet. - Slate Ce livre est tout simplement le meilleur écrit à ce jour sur l'Italie du Sud. - The Economist L'évocation de la Sicile par Peter Robb est admirable. Sa lecture vaut à elle seule une visite de Palerme, cette ville fascinante, dangereuse et moribonde. Et vous pourrez la quitter avant la nuit. - Sunday Times L'écriture de Robb combine brillamment politique, mafia, voyage et grande gastronomie. Son livre est magistral. - The Independent Un chef-d'oeuvre d'élégance et d'investigation empli de scepticisme. Une lecture éminemment plaisante. - Evening Standard À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR Professeur d'université et journaliste né en Australie en 1946, Peter Robb a vécu de nombreuses années à Naples et dans le Sud de l'Italie. Il est l'auteur de plusieurs ouvrages, dont M, une biographie du Caravage. Minuit en Sicile est sa première publication.

Sur l'art, la gastronomie, l'histoire et... cosa nostra

Minuit en Sicile

David Arnold

Informative, timely and accessible introduction to the study of South Asia by leading scholars in the field.

Peter Robb

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