Getting the Boot

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In a revelatory report which unfolds like an opera buffa, BBC correspondent Frei unravels the 1993 corruption scandal which toppled the political elite that had ruled Italy for nearly five decades. He carries the story forward to the second wave of scandals erupting in late 1994, by which time one-third of parliament had come under criminal investigation amid charges of extortion, kickbacks and bribes by private companies seeking public-works contracts. Toppled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media and real-estate mogul whose regime lasted just eight months, emerges as ``Italy's Ross Perot,'' a monopolist who hijacked a populist revolution with promises of salvation and sweeping reform. Frei, based in Rome since 1992, provides a marvelously unbuttoned look at Italian politics, culture and society. He discusses the separatist movement in northern Italy, the resurgence of neo-fascist terrorist groups, the crackdown on the Mafia, and the Italian family, ``a tightly knit, sometimes paranoid social unit.'' Portraying Italians as a deeply conservative people, Frei urges fundamental constitutional reform to create a benevolent federalist government that would take into account the country's regional differences. (July)

Library Journal

Italians have historically had a melodramatic political and economic system. The omnipresent practices of graft and corruption, which were heightened in postwar Italy, erupted into scandal in the early 1990s, resulting in the incarceration of one-third of the country's giants of industry and politics. Frei, the southern Europe correspondent for the BBC, deftly chronicles this revolution, which startled Italy and the world. Frei's report includes the crackdown on the Mafia, the ousting of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the rise of neo-fascism, and the bombing of Florence's Uffizi art galleries. Frei also explores a national psyche that fosters chaos, from Italy's traditional family roots to its surreal devotion to oddities like the porn stars elected to parliament via the Love Party. Frei's report of these "Felliniesque" goings-on will be valuable to those interested in current world events.-David Nudo, "Library Journal"

Gilbert Taylor

Frei, an enterprising BBC reporter, centers his account of Italian political events over the past three years on revelations of incredible thievery. The ladder of corruption topped out with several prime ministers, but Frei's story reveals a complexity far greater than the ethics of who bribed whom. For the mounting scandals confirmed the contempt in which Italians held their state, contempt vindicated by seeing the state's highest stewards being clapped in jail and even investigated for murder. With the exposure of partycrats on the take (regardless of label--all from Communist to Christian Democrat were implicated), the entire postwar political edifice imploded, and from the froth have emerged portraits, archly drawn by Frei, of Mussolini's granddaughter, of the excruise ship crooner Silvio Berlusconi, and of the Love Party's porn-queen publicist giving Frei her political views, "seemingly oblivious to her peep-hole bra." Whatever the political destiny of such characters--and Berlusconi's prime ministership has already flared out--Frei's insight travels beyond scandals, albeit entertaining in themselves, into a commiserative understanding of the country's national traits.