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Blood Washes Blood: A True Story of Love, Murder, and Redemption Under the Sicil |
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Blood Washes Blood: A True Story of Love, Murder, and Redemption Under the Sicil |
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基本信息·出版社：Simon & Schuster
·页码：288 页
·出版日期：2001年04月
·ISBN：0671041592
·条形码：9780671041595
·版本：第1版
·装帧：平装
·开本：20开 Pages Per Sheet
·外文书名：西西里黑手党的爱恨情仇
内容简介 Book DescriptionAgainst the sweeping backdrop of western Sicily, in a riveting seven-year quest, Frank Viviano pieces together his own harrowing ancestral history of betrayal and redemption. His take is haunted, from its violent opening to its stunning climax, by an ancient Sicilian proverb, Lu sangu lava lu sangu, "Blood washes blood": the torrent of unforgiving vengeance that flows from an unforgivable offense.
Viviano's great-great grandfather was a legendary bandit who traveled the countryside of Sicily by night in the robes of a friar and was known as "the Monk." His brutal murder has remained shrouded in mystery for four generations. Until now.
Populated by an extraordinary cast of nineteenth-century Robin Hood brigands and twentieth-century underworld bosses, here is a true-life Godfather, in which past and present finally merge into a single story with a shattering climax that ultimately changes the way the author views his immigrant family's complex legacy -- and himself.
Amazon.comIn 1995, two years after his grandfather whispered the name of his great-great-grandfather's killer to him, Frank Viviano visited Sicily to learn the events that shaped his namesake's life and strongly influenced his own. Nicknamed "The Monk" for the garments he wore while robbing the rich and bureaucratic, Viviano's ancestor left little for the experienced foreign correspondent to follow. Plus, the slow-jolt journey of Sicilian lifestyles often ended in polite reticence or remarkable disorganization; even rudimentary information, such as his predecessor's gravesite, was lost. In a "morbid tidying up," Mussolini's local officials removed the remains of all pre-Fascists: "In their zeal to launch the new millennium, the fascisti hadn't bothered to keep lists of the disinterred. The old tombstones were dumped into the sea, next to the limestone blocks that the fishermen referred to as 'Atlantis.'"
In between assignments in Bosnia and the West Bank, Viviano learned to take a less direct approach. Guided by stories told to him in his childhood by his grandmother, he demystifies the region's bandit-rebel history, its current life under the sistema, and its creation of the modern Italian mafia. Viviano was already aware of his family's supposed connections to the mafia, causing him to look more carefully at the times that produced these men. In the process, he began to take a closer look at his own personal life:
The dramatic narrative of ancestry is not erased by immigration. It is driven into a clandestine realm where setting and characters are only dimly recalled, or transformed into fairy-tale heroes and villains in the landscape of fable. The Monk, in this sense, had withdrawn into my grandparents' tales and the isolated recesses of my imagination, into hidden canyons where I could not directly confront him.
Suspenseful and well balanced, Blood Washes Blood is an exciting and thoughtful page-turner, a remarkable story of family, mystery, and friendship. Viviano's writing is at its best when he follows the complicated trail of his family's past, and falters only slightly when he attempts to imagine his ancestor's life.
--Karin Rosman
From Publishers WeeklyIn a land steeped in family tradition, the rootless Viviano (a foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle) looks to uncover a family secret: how his great-great-grandfather, a man mysteriously known as "the Monk," was gunned down at a crossroads in rural Sicily more than a century earlier, the victim of an ordered hit. In search of answers, Viviano travels to his ancestral village of Terrasini. He soon discovers that when it comes to the island's history, there are always two competing versions of the truth: "one lies in the official past, the other in the folk memory and its poetic reincarnation in fable." His book echoes this sentiment as he intersperses the rather linear account of his investigation with a fictional re-creation of events supported by his findings. Each complements the other, and the book is further enriched as, over the course of his clearly weighty research, Viviano shares a portrait of Sicily and its inhabitants. Of particular interest and, as it turns out, importance are his discoveries about the origin of what has become most strongly associated with the island the mafia, or sistema del potere. Viviano is clearly fascinated by it, but his own experiences with carnage as a reporter keep him well clear of any Hollywood glorification. Rather, he traces its evolution as a brutal yet organic power structure in a land traditionally ruled by outsiders. Viviano's conclusions seem both well reasoned and enticing, as do the results of his inquiry into the story of his great-great-grandfather a search that comes to a particularly satisfying surprise ending. And while, in its purest form, the book is a solid piece of storytelling and reporting, its greatest strength may be that while it begins as a personal search, it ultimately reveals the history of a people. Agent, Amy Rennert. 5-city author tour. (May 8)Forecast: Viviano's unsentimental but poignant closeup of one Sicilian family and the role of the Mafia how it began and how different it has become will appeal to fans of the equally unsentimental but courageous TV program The Sopranos. His five-city author tour is sure to garner critical and popular attention.
From BooklistViviano's title, referring to a Sicilian proverb urging vengeance, spotlights the author's compulsion to find the murderer of his long-dead paternal grandfather. This intriguing work traces the rootless Viviano's (at-large foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, unmarried, and childless) fascination with his murdered grandfather, nicknamed "the Monk" for his modus operandi of dressing in clerical robes to rob wayfarers. Viviano chronicles his own sojourn in a tiny fishing village in western Sicily, searching documents, interviewing relatives, and observing a way of life rooted in the past. Part memoir, part detective story, this probe should appeal to all readers interested in the origins of the Mafia, immigration stories, the differences between European and American connections to the past, and personal searches for meaning. Viviano's wide experience in international reporting and his honesty about his own self-doubts lend credibility to his findings, both historical and emotional. Fascinating.
Connie Fletcher
From Library JournalViviano, a veteran itinerant journalist (San Francisco Chronicle), embarked on a personal journey in 1992 to learn about the murder of his great-great-grandfather, the man he was named for. He covers much territory, furnishing a travelog of modern Sicily, with quite a bit of information on Sicilian customs, traditions, and history, including the origins of the sistema de potere, the Mafia. To describe the warm, honest history of his family, the author had to contend with unorganized and bureaucratically inaccessible archives, reluctant sources, sporadic documentation, poorly written records, and the Sicilian tradition of families marrying the same families, generation after generation. He manages to wade through the material and tie it all up neatly by the end. While Viviano deserves much praise for persevering, his complaints in the middle of the book verge on the self-pitying, and the book lags a bit as a result. A highly enjoyable memoir recommended for academic libraries and those with a special interest in Sicily, Sicilian immigrants, and the Mafia. Karen Sandin Silverman, Ctr. for Applied Research, Philadelphia
Book Dimension: length: (cm)20.8 width:(cm)13.4
作者简介 Frank Viviano, at-large foreign correspondent for the
San Francisco Chronicle, has covered events ranging from the fall of Marcos in the Philippines and the Tiananmen Square crackdown to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Bosnian civil war. A two-time recipient of the World Affairs Council's Thomas Storke Award for Achievements in International Reporting, he is the author of six other books.
媒体推荐 Variety An Italian
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. --
Review 编辑推荐 Nicholas Pileggi
New York Times bestselling author of
Wiseguy and
CasinoA brilliant personal narrative that captures the history and customs of the Sicilian society which spawned
The Godfather. I can't recommend it highly enough.^
Time InternationalA beguiling, honest tale...A nuanced story full of the guts of human frailty -- betrayal, revenge, frustration, poverty, pain, despair.^
VarietyAn Italian
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
