A work of biography, autobiography, fiction and travel, spanning three generations of southern Italian family life. Mezzogiorno is a unique mediation on family history and the Italian Diaspora. Author David Kerekes reconstructs three generations of family history and myth, with material drawn from the anecdotal legacy of his mother, enriched by further interviews with other family members in Campania, southern Italy. Set against peasant riots and the collapse of the Fascist Party, the collected and recreated tales are placed in the mouth of a boys ghost, as he reveals the potted tragedies, scandals and secrets of the family Iantosca to his sister. In his quest to explore the anecdotal history of his family, Kerekes came to love the land his mother had left behind, and its atmosphere saturates Mezzogiorno. The religious and superstitious culture in which the Iantoscas lived inevitably make the work as much a piece of magical realism as it is biography, the family drama unfurling amidst a landscape of abject poverty, vicious landlords, San Antonio, feuds, curses, festa and the tarantella, a world lost to the changing Italy of the twenty-first century. A work of fact, fiction, fable and folklore
spanning three generations of southern Italian family life.
"Europe ends at Naples and ends badly.
Calabria, Sicily and all the rest belong to Africa." - Creuze de Lesser, 1806
No geographical map distinguishes Montefalcione as being different from any number of isolated mountain villages in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days, like other villages.
Yet Montefalcione in Campania is the setting for a unique meditation on family and the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author's own family.
The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella - a world lost to the changing face of the twenty-first century.
