Mark Rotella, a grandson of Calabrese immigrants, takes us on a tour of Calabria, focusing on his family’s ancestral village of Gimigliano (CZ). Rotella travels with Giuseppe, a postcard photographer, through Calabria describing wonderfully the beauty of her landscape, traditions, culture, and people. We visit Gimigliano for Easter processions and nearby notable towns such as Squillace, Maida, and Tiriolo, learn how to make soppressata, ‘nduja, and limoncello and how to eat prickly pears, and, of course, tag along as the author steals some figs. Dotted with bits of Calabria’s long history of various rulers and natural disasters, Stolen Figs is, as its book jacket says, “a modern travelogue” that treats its readers to the heart of Calabria.

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Product Description

Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy -- a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during scorching summers. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian-American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy.

Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs -- named a Best Travel Book of 2003 by Condé Nast Traveler -- is a marvelous evocation of Calabria. A grandson of Calabrese immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella -- and the reader -- into its secrets: how to make a soppressata and 'nduja, and, of course, how to steal a fig without committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue -- at once charming and wise, and full of an earthy and unpretentious sense of life that now, as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233638 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The jacket copy defines PW Forecasts editor Rotella's narrative as a "model travelogue," but it's much more. Even without a conventional conflict and plot, the author's intensity and personal commitment to a country and its inhabitants cast a spell. Anecdotes range from comedic-a long unseen relative scolds Rotella's father, "Thirty years and you don't write!"-to curiously romantic, as when the author's wedding ring slips off his finger while swimming and a "crazy aunt" exclaims, "That's good luck. Now you will have to return!" Descriptions of delicacies such as soppressata, capicola, fettucine and rag— simmered with pepperoni incite a desire to be there just for the luscious, succulent meals, supporting Rotella's belief that you simply can't get a bad meal in Italy. Calabria is a particularly vivid character; readers learn how much the region has been through: spoiled by drought, destroyed by earthquakes and plundered by barons and kings. Rotella points out the effects of Mafia control in Bianca, a small, decrepit city, and the economic destruction it causes, without belaboring or stereotyping the Italian-Mafia connection. Playful moments are equally memorable, detailing petty fig heists from trees belonging to unknown farmers. Such likable protagonists as Rotella's loving father, his wife, and guide Giuseppe are woven unobtrusively through the tale of a culture that counts among its children Tony Bennett, Phil Rizzuto and Stanley Tucci. The book is a love letter, and Rotella reinforces that feeling when he writes, "I am a romantic. With each trip back to Calabria, I've felt myself becoming not only more Calabrese but more Italian." Readers, whether Italian or not, will find themselves captivated by so much meticulously drawn history and enchanting terrain.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Rotella introduces the world of contemporary Calabria, the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula, Rotella's ancestral home and that of most Italian Americans. This rugged land offers little agricultural bounty save those hardy Mediterranean natives: olives, figs, oranges, and grapes. Rotella and his father pay a visit to the family village, Gimigliano, perched on a crag. There they begin encounters with those relatives who chose not to flee to an easier life in America. So successful is the family reunion that Rotella vows to return biennially. Over a series of journeys, he witnesses growth in Calabria's tourist trade by those who love things Italian but who cannot afford trendy Umbria and Tuscany. Tales told by local Calabrese intertwine with Rotella's father's stories of growing up in Connecticut. Exhausting the chronicles of his ancestral town, Rotella sets out with the indefatigable Giuseppe to traverse the rest of Calabria. Stories flow easily from Rotella's pen, and his portrait of Calabrese life will no doubt encourage more to visit the south of Italy. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Mr. Rotella is not writing tourist or voyeur gastronomy; he is writing about food and life. And his Stolen Figs, with its travels and sights and encounters, goes beyond any of these things. It is about life: Calabrians' and ultimately his own."--Richard Eder, The New York Times

"Rotella's account of his travels there, combined with family history and memories, is a charming digression from the unbearably lush memoirs of Tuscany and other more romantic parts of Italy." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Italian Americans of a new generation are discovering their homeland, and they could not ask for a better guide than Mark Rotella." --Gay Talese

"Stolen Figs is a charming, entertaining, graceful, warm-blooded tale, a genuine contribution to what we know about who we once were." --Bill Tonelli, editor of The Italian American Reader

"Calabria deserves to be discovered and Mark Rotella is an enthusiastic and compassionate guide, traveling from the top to the toe of this least-known region of Italy to uncover the people, the food and the folk traditions that make up his Calabrian heritage."--Mary Taylor Simeti, author of On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal
-- Review

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Customer Reviews

perfect union of writer and subject
In a perfect union of writer and subject, Publisher's Weekly editor, Mark Rotella, returns to his grandparents' homeland of Calabria. "Spurred" by Gay Talese's book, "Unto the Sons", to explore his southern Italian heritage, the author, an unabashedly, and self-admitted "romantic", provides an excellent introduction to this often overlooked region, conveying his own passion for familiarizing himself with it in the process. Largely untouched by tourism, and writers, for that matter, Calabria is both financially depressed and culturally rich, with large emigrant populations in Niagara Falls, New York, Toronto, Canada, and Danbury, Connecticut (though Rotella grew up primarily in Saint Petersburg, Florida). Whether traveling solo, with his father, wife, or postcard salesman, Guiseppe, Rotella captures the unique personality of each village he visits, with a superb eye for atmosphere, setting, and aesthetically outstanding visuals. Political and historical background, including foreign influences on the region, and effects of the Mafia, provide a framework and understanding to current situations. Rotella intersperses snippets of other writers' experiences, local legends, folktales, proverbs, customs, and traditions, lending an uncommonly expansive insight to Calabria. Combining past and present also lends a certain fascination for the reader, and includes the author's reunions with relatives, relationships formed over his several trips there, his dad's poignant remininsces, a visit to the church his grandparents were married in, and the elaborate Easter celebrations he attended. Though not without a sense of humor, Rotella's writing is most impressive for its unaffected style. Descriptions of the rugged, yet beautiful landscape, and harsh geography have a cinematic quality, and his writing becomes completely poetic over the mouthwatering cuisine he abundantly partakes of. In the end, and seeming to mirror the author himself, what emerges is an enticing picture of a gracious, highly social, and charmingly "masculine" society. Woman reader from New York

Evocative and moving
I found Rotella's account of his travels through Calabria to be evocative and very moving. For those seeking a travelogue - look elsewhere. This is one person's journey to discover his roots and family, and along the way discovering a beautiful unspoiled part of Italy, far from the tourists in the North. The descriptions of his relatives, the countryside, and the food made me truly envious. This is a lovely book.

Explore Family Roots in Calabria: Taste and Feel Old Italy
Hear the sounds, taste the food, kiss the relatives, explore the terrain, climb the mountains, visit the castles, learn the history (Greeks, Bruttians, Romans, Visigoth conquests) ... experience the adventure of exploring one's family roots in a small village in southern Italy. The village, Gimigilano, is located in Calabria, the region that looks like the foot on a map of Italy, which everyone knows resembles a boot. The author, Mark Rotella, describes his *very* first visit to this village with his father and later subsequent visits either alone or with his wife, who is of English and Dutch heritage. He captivates the reader with descriptions of nostalgia and heart-felt longing when he emotionally connects to the traditions, customs and life of the village. He is befriended by Giuseppe, a photographer, who produces postcards that he sells to regional shops and businesses. Giuseppe becomes his personal driver and tour guide to Calabria ...

The author intersperses memories of growing up, recalling how his grandfather made wine in New Jersey, which he traded with a Portuguese farmer, who raised pigs ... his grandfather slaughtered the pig in the old-fashion way and provided the family with the same cuts of meat that the author saw on his visit to the village. The author includes memories and discussions with his father. One of which is the family story when his grandfather returned to the village to find himself a suitable wife. He married her in the village and took his bride to live in America. Since his grandmother and grandfather practiced old world ways, the author was able to trace many of the family traditons back to the village and culture of the region. Favorite dishes, foods, spices and their preparation, Italian hospitality, the importance of family and the sense of belonging, are all aspects of the Italian culture of which the author is proud.

The continuation of customs and traditions in Calabria persist ... kneading and baking bread in communal fashion, making wine, eating rabbit stew, tending an olive grove, stealing figs from a neighbor's tree. The author wished to be viewed and accepted as the "returning son of the village" ... even sought Italian citizenship. He was disappointed to discover he was seen as "the American visitor". He found out ...one had to be *born* in Calabria, to be viewed as Calabrese. While Calabria has a depressed economy compared to Rome, Venice and Naples, all northern cities ... it has a proud and resilient people who continue to live in the region helping the area to develop. This author recreates the feelings and lifestyle of the village and surrounding towns and cities so well that the reader wants to experience it first hand. The imagination of the reader is captured by the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of Calabria ... one feels and senses this part of Italy is unspoiled in its splendor and beauty. You want to go there before the modern world intrudes and destroys it. Erika Borsos (erikab93)