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. Their ancestors came from all over the early Mediterranean to the wide bay and its islands, shadowed by a dormant volcano. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they made a great and terribly human city. Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples ranges across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greek landings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival thirty-something years ago. In 1503 Naples became the Mediterranean capital of Spain's world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only by Paris and Istanbul, an extraordinary concentration of military power, lavish consumption, poverty and desperation. As the occupying empire went into crisis, exhausted by its wars against Islamists in the Mediterranean and Protestants in the North, the people of Naples paid a dreadful price. Naples was where in 1606 the greatest painter of his age fled from Rome after a fatal street fight. Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio found in its teeming streets an image of the age's crisis, and released among the painters of Naples the energies of a great age in European art-until everything erupted in a revolt by the dispossessed, and the people of an occupied city brought Europe into the modern world.

About the Author

Peter Robb's first book, Midnight in Sicily (1996), was a bestseller in Australia and the UK. It won the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction in 1997. His book M (1998), about the painter Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio, won the same prize, and the National Biography Award, two years later. It was a bestseller in the US and a New York Times Notable Book for 2000. A Death in Brazil (2003) was the Age Nonfiction Book of the Year and won the Queensland Premier's Award for Nonfiction in 2004. Peter Robb has also published a book of pulp novellas called Pig's Blood and Other Fluids (1999), which won nothing.

Prizes

Peter Robb is an award-winning and bestselling non-fiction writer and this is his first book for over seven years Ranging across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, this book is both hugely comprehensive and engagingly personal For fans of classic travel writing; City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, Salonica by Mark Mazower and Calcutta by Krishna Dutta

Reviews

Peter Robbs new book reminds me of a kaleidoscope. Turn the barrel, or page, and a new, mesmerising image, fact, opinion or event reveals itself, leading the reader to re-think the intricacies, contradictions, beauty and barbarity of the history of the challenging city of Naples. The books subtitle is A book of Art and Insurrection but that does not do justice to the breadth and depth of Robbs command of his subject. Commencing with references to Bronze Age trading and ending with a contemporary beach vignette, the book gives the reader a remarkable overview of the history of this great and terrible city, with particular focus on the 16th and 17th centuries. This was the period when Naples became the European capital of Spains world empire and the base for the bloody Christian struggle with Islam. Robb certainly does not skimp on the political, religious, mercantile and domestic realities of this period, culminating in a vivid, even exciting, account of the citywide Food Tax revolt of 1647 and its aftermath. However, his passions are the Neapolitan artists and writers who flourished in what was arguably one of the most important cities of the time. The reader needs to remain focussed as names, commissions, friendships, rivalries and vendettas spill from the page, not always chronologically. Caravaggio (whom Robb usually refers to by his given name, Michelangelo Merisi), Gargiulo, Ribera, Bartolomeo Passante (a painter of genius who died too young), the elusive Caracciolo, to name just a few, live again due to the vitality of the writing, and we are directed more than once to Naples Museo di Capodimonte and various churches to rediscover for ourselves a multitude of glorious painted treasures. Writers, too, throng the pages in a sometimes quirky way. Latin poet Virgil is linked with Robbs Neapolitan barber Virgilio, solely due to his name. Boccaccio and the Decameron make an appearance. The original Cinderella and her unique slipper are explained. Writers of political and religious tracts are discussed both for their influence and for their sometimes grisly fate. Brief musical references appear, not least a casual mention of San Pietro a Majella, `Europes first music school'. If one of the functions of a serious factual book is to stimulate the reader to explore further, this one certainly fulfils the brief. The author simply does not have the space to flesh out all his allusions. Peter Robb has crafted a turbulent book about turbulent times. It will amply repay any serious reader whose interests include Neapolitan artists and interlopers, their passions, rivalries and vendettas; the Spanish Inquisition; political and artistic patronage; the survival skills of the Neapolitan working classes; the rise and decline of empires; and much more. Dont expect an easy read: do expect to be informed, entertained and transported to a particularly resilient people and place. (See interview, page 44.) Max Oliver is a Sydney bookseller with a particular interest in Italy

Praise for A Death in Brazil: 'Sentence after sentence, page after page, with its eye for landscape, ear for character, delicious sensuousness, and bold investigation of political greed, corruption and revolution, A Death in Brazil is an astonishing feat of storytelling' Peter Carey 'As good a portrait of Brazil as anything else I have read ... he has managed to capture the country's spirit and paradoxes in a way few other writers have' Alex Bellos, Guardian 'Robb's fearlessness is one of the key components of his outstanding book. Impossible to corral into a single genre, it draws on travelogue, history, memoir, thriller, investigative journalism and cookery writing. It creates a heady and fascinating picture of an extraordinary country' Daily Telegraph