A fictional account (based on real observations of the author, no doubt) of a few families living along the same strada vicinale in the Umbrian countryside. Very well written and entertaining. The parts about the German Ritter have more depth than you would expect to find in a light read as this. The same holds for the Cecilia character. Only a writer who has lived in Italy for years could give such a chillingly cynical account of the Italian way of behaving as Unsworth has put in the mouth of the lawyer Mancini, a character you will not easily forget after finishing this book. Some of his one-liners have the quality of the Gattopardo prince of De Lampedusa. It is only just, then, that the last words of this great novel are Mancini’s.