Welcome to Italy

The world is a village, as the saying goes. But that’s not true, because every country has its own character, its own charm, its own faults. And in the eyes of a young Englishman who arrives in Milan in 1989 with the dream of becoming a rock musician, Italy immediately appears as a mysterious, sensual woman… impossible to understand! The boy’s name is John Peter Sloan, from Birmingham. He had spent his childhood in a council flat and his teenage years as a street performer, playing to passers-by on a beat-up guitar. His encounter with a street artist was an astonishing one, and made him realise that there is another way of life, one that needs to be embraced with joy and a touch of madness. For example, traffic lights here are only used to decorate the streets, like Christmas trees; if you’re sitting in an aeroplane and you’re afraid of crashing, the solution is to touch your testicles; there’s a strange disease called “cervicale”, which curiously only affects the backs of Italians; it takes seven days to plan a dinner out with friends and at least an hour to choose the wine; that pouring ketchup over a dish of tagliatelle with truffles is not really a good idea, even if the truffles smell like feet; that Italian women have a formidable weapon for resolving any argument to their advantage, and this weapon is called “pouting”; that the gesticulation of the arms in normal Italian conversation could cause a hurricane on the other side of the world . .. Having lived, travelled, cried, laughed and taught in Italy for so many years, Sloan tells us for the first time his story and his sincere, visceral love for the country he now calls ‘home’; with a host of hilarious episodes, he tells us above all what makes him truly unique: we Italians.