Unsworth, Barry

New York. 1997. Doubleday. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0385486510. 251 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Ruth Marten. keywords: Literature England Italy. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Golden Umbria is home to breathtaking scenery and great art; it is also where Hannibal and his invading band of Carthaginians ambushed and slaughtered a Roman legion, and where the local place-names still speak of that bloodshed. Unsworth's contemporary invaders include the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity among the Umbrian hills, who are bilked out of their savings by the corrupt English ‘building expert' Stan Blemish; the Chapmans, a British property speculator and his wife, whose dispute with their neighbors over a wall escalates into a feud of nearly medieval proportions; Anders Ritter, a German haunted by the part his father played in a mass killing of Italian hostages in Rome during the Second World War; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. And at the center of all these webs of deceit and greed is the cunning lawyer Mancini, happy to aid the disputants - and to exploit to the fullest the faith that these ‘innocents abroad' have placed in him. inventory #27352 ISBN: 0385486510.