“It is notoriously easier to write about things one does not really know well. One has fewer doubts. But to write about one’s own country was a tortured enterprise. I knew too much.” Luigi Barzini wrote in the foreword of his lost classic The Italians.  

Barzini knew his home country way too well. He knew we talk with our hands; we’re loud and overly-dramatic. He knew that, in conversation, our facial expressions are more important than what we actually say. He knew that we can be so flattering to the point of telling lies, and that, in Italy, being obliging and affable is an art. He knew that, for us, family comes before anything, even law, at times.