“The essays or ‘chronicles’ in this collection are slight but marvelous…powerful…moving…In Marina Harss’s lively translation, these ‘chronicles’ are more concrete and colorful than the furious polemics of Pasolini’s last years…to which they make an excellent prelude.”
—The Nation
“What’s ugly and squalid shows its beauty to Pasolini…The short pieces succeed as portraits of people and place during a certain time…The author opens up a window on hidden Rome, a part of the city that continues to exist in certain dodgy corners and presumably always will.”
—Bloomsbury Review
“The pieces in this collection suggest watercolor portraits of Rome and Romans as they were when Pasolini first moved to the city in 1949…a gorgeous account of Pasolini’s itinerary, migrating between zones of cultural privilege and ‘the lower depths.’…[T]hese occasional writings—some outtakes from his novels, others written for newspapers and journals—are suffused with an ecstatic love for the wiles and mannerisms, urban patois, and unconscious grace of the underclass. Pasolini’s lightness of touch and breadth of observation combine in a gestural prose with a revolutionary purpose.”
—Film Comment