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Cinico: Travels with a Good Professor at the Time of the Scottish Referendum
The narrator is an urbane, cynical and egocentric Italian journalist with little interest in the truth, though not as shabby as his companion, a professor of politics. The journalist meets people across the spectrum of ideas, and the book concerns not just political events, but how people interrelate within a social context, Scotland's place in Europe and how Europeans interpret each other. The Italian encounters a range of Europeans: a Ukrainian nationalist, a Russian religious guru, an eccentric Estonian, an Algerian refugee, a Lithuanian, a dying man and many Scots from different walks of life. The narrator falls in love with a Scottish campaigner.
Beneath the urbane veneer, he's a complex mix of the old-fashioned and the fashionable, and the relationship soon encounters problems. The Italian, like Voltaire's Candide, starts with a mindset incapable of bringing him either understanding or lasting contentment, and ends the book with some understanding and awareness, insufficient for the elusive happiness we all seek but sufficient for a perfectly acceptable human existence.
Beneath the urbane veneer, he's a complex mix of the old-fashioned and the fashionable, and the relationship soon encounters problems. The Italian, like Voltaire's Candide, starts with a mindset incapable of bringing him either understanding or lasting contentment, and ends the book with some understanding and awareness, insufficient for the elusive happiness we all seek but sufficient for a perfectly acceptable human existence.
- GenresScotland
192 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2017
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About the author
Allan Cameron
44 books1 followerAllan Cameron (born 1952) is a Scottish author and translator. He was brought up in Nigeria and Bangladesh. He worked at sea and at the age of twenty moved to Italy, where he lived for many years. At the age of 31 he went to university and, after graduating, worked in the same department he had studied in. In 1992 he moved to Scotland, he now lives in Glasgow.
He has published articles in the daily newspaper L’Unità, the Italian current affairs magazine Reset, and the academic journals Teoria Politica and Renaissance Studies. He also contributed the comments on Pope, Hume and Winstanley to Alasdair Gray’s Book of Prefaces.
Allan Cameron has translated seventeen books by a variety of writers, including the most important post-war Italian philosopher, Norberto Bobbio, the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, and the leading historian Eric Hobsbawm.
His novels include The Golden Menagerie and The Berlusconi Bonus.
He has published articles in the daily newspaper L’Unità, the Italian current affairs magazine Reset, and the academic journals Teoria Politica and Renaissance Studies. He also contributed the comments on Pope, Hume and Winstanley to Alasdair Gray’s Book of Prefaces.
Allan Cameron has translated seventeen books by a variety of writers, including the most important post-war Italian philosopher, Norberto Bobbio, the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, and the leading historian Eric Hobsbawm.
His novels include The Golden Menagerie and The Berlusconi Bonus.
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