There's a plethora of books about Italy, many of them of the six-months-in-Tuscany variety, with cosy tales of quaint natives and pretty landscapes, all of which illuminate the prejudices of the writer rather than the purported subject matter. Tim Parks has lived in Verona for twenty years, the bulk of his adult life, and he has, as a blow-in, an unrivalled understanding of Italy, Italians and illusion. I say as a blow-in, for he describes himself thus, but I found his book as accurate a representation of my countrymen as Luigi Barzini's ice-cool analysis of the national character in his book 'The Italians'.
The book, as it title suggests, is an account of his year spent following Verona's football team to every match, both home and away. It's infectious: I haven't been interested in football for twenty years or more, but by the book's half-time I was hooked. I was outraged by the refereeing, entranced by the match statistics, was lifted with elation at the wins and was left fretting when casual chance or human error made Verona's losses inevitable. But this isn't really a book about football. The team and its fans - the brigate gialloblu - are the vehicle that takes the reader on a tour of Italy, from Udine in the far reaches of the north east to Catania in Sicily, about as far south west as you can go in Italian territory.

The greatest truth that Parks clearly delineates is that in Italy nothing is as it appears. Just as there are set-pieces on the pitch, there are set pieces outside it. Italians slip easily into role-playing, whether it's being a foul-mouthed fan or a riot policeman holding a peace line. When the piece is over, they slip just as easily back into normal life as they did into the extremes. So much is show, so much is illusion. When men play cards in the bar, shouting and slamming cards onto the table, they're neither angry nor arguing, that's simply how this particular set-piece is played. It's expected, by the other players and by any observers.

What Parks has achieved so well in this book is to make it allegorical; he runs parallel stories with the helter-skelter ride of the team's fortunes. It's the details, the minutiae, that are so illuminating. All the standard prejudices; the racism of Verona, the slovenly South, the industrious Torinese, are all exposed as largely illusion, a focus on minute differences in an otherwise homogeneous people. Over and over I found myself smiling and nodding in recognition. Parks's observations are acute, his exasperation with and his love for Italy come in equal measures, mirroring my own.