Thus Spake Bellavista - Luciano De Crescenzo

In his home on the slopes of Sant' Antonio, the Professor holds court . . .

Salvatore, employed as assistant deputy porter at no. 58, Via Petrarca, and Saverio, who elevates unemployment to the status of a fine art, drink the sparkling Gragnano wine and listen . . .

Dr Palluotto, a convert to the chrome-plated philosophies of his adopted Milano, takes issue in impassioned dispute . . .

The Professor remains unmoved. Milan is the north and the north is different.

Bellavista's discourses on love and liberty are warmed by the good red wine and the sunlight of the south. He sees the world and all its ways through the glass of the wisdoms of the streets of Naples.

And outside, Neapolitan life goes on . . . the most complex of stratagems admit thousands to the football match without a ticket . . . a businessman of regular habits rises in the middle of the night to discover the man who sleeps in his car . . . and complex negotiations aboard a bus reveal how tall a small passenger needs to be before he must buy a ticket to ride . . .

The chapters of Thus Spake Bellavista alternate between philosophy told as anecdote and anecdotes with all the resonance of philosophy.

Here is a fiction to serve Naples as generously as Aragon's Paris Peasant served the City of Light - the work of a writer who promises more than any other to inherit the mantle of the late Italo Calvino.

This first English translation of Cos Parl Bellavista has been specially commissioned from Avril Bardoni for this Picador edition.