Who's Afraid of the Four Day Week?
Plus, edible insects and fascist era monuments
Italian politics is infamously convoluted. Since WWII this country has had 69 governments; the average lasting just 13 months. As a journalist it can be frustrating to keep up: just as you think you’re starting to get a grip on things the tables are invariably turned, new coalitions form and apparently ‘key players’ vanish off to a villa in Sardegna never to be seen again. This sense has only been compounded in Covid times, when the news has consisted almost exclusively of case and recovery rates, and the tedious anti-vax culture war. And yet, there’s no doubt we’re living through a moment of transformation: despite national debt now standing at 156% of GDP, Mario Draghi’s government has convinced the EU - and investors - that the economy can be salvaged, and critics on the left and right have been virtually silenced in the face of his new centrist revival. With so much going on ‘behind the scenes’, Adam Tooze’s latest piece for Foreign Policy is essential reading. In it, he ably sets out the ideological contortions that have taken place over the past few decades, emphasising, in particular, how EU financial pressure is shaping political behaviour, and the increasing importance of executive power in ensuring the system is able to sustain itself. It’s a great - fairly sober - explainer, but a welcome corrective to some of the more polemical commentary surrounding the upcoming Presidential election… so check it out here.
This next one’s Italian language only I’m afraid, though the conclusions and links below are of far broader significance. VICE Italia has just published a neat video about the four day week which I found genuinely enlightening (see above). Six people: journalists, entrepreneurs, employees, and precarious freelancers discuss whether or not they are in favour of reducing working hours to 80% while keeping fixed pay. Advocates suggest this could be a way of guaranteeing full employment, tackling burnout and fatigue, and addressing some aspects of the climate crisis. Critics maintain that such a measure - if given legislative force - would place unnecessary constraints on some ultra-productive workers and distract from other desirable polices such as guaranteeing a decent minimum wage, or abolishing work on Sundays across (almost) all sectors. The above debate is surprisingly respectful, so for that reason alone it’s well worth a watch. Given the current appetite to trial such a scheme in the UK, U.S, Spain and elsewhere, though, I also want to flag-up this Financial Times analysis which is more favourable than one might expect and brings up some thought-provoking issues of its own. Bring it on I say.
Grasshoppers. Lab-grown meat. Vitamin K pills. Chia seeds. Goji Berries. These so-called “novel foods” probably aren’t the first things you think of when you imagine ‘Italian cuisine’. Indeed, for most people living in this country, such a suggestion would probably be near-blasphemous. Nevertheless, according to this provocative piece for Italics magazine by Federico Muzzati, one of these new trends in particular - edible insects - would mark a step forward for food culture here. Not only because these critters offer a great source of protein, but because they are healthy, sustainable and apparently tasty too. According to Muzzati, the Italian objection to novel foods as being “an insult to the nation’s history” is little more than ahistorical prejudice. As he points out, “if we look back at our own Italian roots, insects have a long, delicious history in our cuisines. From cicadas to beetles, these ‘novel’ foods were the height of luxury for the ancient Romans and Greeks.” Muzzati ends his piece with a list of contemporary eateries that are trying to change peoples’ minds about adding bugs to their diet. Of them all, Entonote, a Milan-based business which is working to improve the image of insect eating though high quality graphic design and gourmet food photography, seems the most appealing. Though I have to say, sustainability benefits or not, I’m far from enthusiastic about their proposed house speciality: ‘grasshopper avocado toast.’
Arts and culture: time to recontextualise
My friend and ex-openDemocracy colleague Alex Sakalis published a fascinating piece for the BBC this week about Bolzano, the beguiling Dolomite town which he describes evocatively as “a whimsical snow globe of winding streets, pastel-coloured houses and Baroque taverns.” His focus here, though, is not the ski slopes and mountains and alpine peaks but the architectural legacy of Italy’s fascist past. Alex takes a stroll around the western part of the town, reflecting on the “awe-inspiring, odious and perplexing” monuments that remain from the 20s and 30s, including the tax office, with its 57 panel bas relief depicting the rise of the regime, and the Bolzano Victory Monument, a white marble arch symbolising Italian dominance over the South Tyrollean people. It’s a long read, but I encourage you to stick with it to the end for a powerful account of how the local authorities have begun “recontextualising” these buildings, to protect their historic and artistic value while making sure far-right nostalgia is appropriately curtailed. I learnt a lot from the article and came away with a Word Doc full of notes. So thank you Alex! Read it here.
GRANTA has proved a real treasure-trove for Italian fiction in translation this past couple of weeks. On 11 January the magazine published ‘The Infinite Room’ by Claudia Durastanti, an author I flagged up in the last newsletter regarding her novel Strangers I Know. This latest short story is evocative in its own right, and serves as a great introduction to her unique prose style. Read it and I guarantee you’ll be hooked. Alongside this, though, the editors have also published a short piece by Evelina Santangelo, a Palermitan author of six novels and huge number of “badass feminist punk stories” as a friend of mine put it to me. I’ve never read Santangelo’s work, but her latest novel From Another World, a Mediterranean gothic allegory about the refugee crisis, came out in English translation last November and it sounds fairly intriguing. Certainly, the free extract, which follows a young boy Khaled’s travels from Northern Italy down towards Sicily, whetted my appetite and I’m curious to find out more.
Recipe: gulash di funghi e peperoni
This week’s recipe is a Rachel Roddy adaptation of an idea first published in Paola Bacchia’s 2021 cookbook, Istria. Mushroom and pepper goulash might sound like the kind of fusion monstrosity dreamt up by the guardian’s cringily postmodern food writers but it’s actually well-rooted in the Austro-Hungarian cuisine of the area (which lives on in peculiar ways with Italian, Croatian, and Slovenian inflections). I haven’t tried this one yet, but the prospect of a vegetarian stew flavoured with abundant smoked paprika and cream, and put together by someone who has been preparing the dish for decades, does seem like something worthy of both bookmarking and celebration. Here’s the Roddy recipe and a link to Bacchia’s book. I’m looking forward to serving this with some garlic and parsley mash as a weekend treat.
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
If you enjoyed this newsletter I hope down the line you’ll consider becoming a supporter for EUR 5.00 per month (the price of a weekly catch-up over an espresso). I’ll be launching a paid subscription option later this year, to help fund some more in-depth writing and some original graphics too. More on that, though, once the pandemic subsides. In the meantime, please do consider forwarding this to a friend or two. It’s a big help.