Sari Gilbert

I've always been an avid reader: my third grade teacher, Miss Audain, was very impressed when I sailed through Felix Salten's 300 page "Bambi" (yes it's a real book!) perhapos leading to my New York school's decision to have me skip the fourth grade. And there's a fifth-grade class photo in which I am sitting at my desk wearing some sort of shawl and with an open book in front of me. I clearly remember wanting to come across as an "intellectual".
My love of reading might also explain why I stayed in school so long, although by the time I was studying for my MA, and later for a Ph.D, I was concentrating on political and historical books, as my chosen subject then was International Relations with an emphasis on Europe and, more particularly, on Italy. Yes, I fell in love with Italy at a tender age - even before college I was reading novels that were set in Italy or other parts of the Mediterranean - and so it may not be a surprise that I ended up in Rome where I have been living since the 1970s. Europe and and has been living in Rome since the 1970s when moved there to complete her graduate studies and then found work there as a reporter and foreign correspondent for a variety of prestigious US and Italian newspapers and magazines.
Except for fashion shows and soccer games, I covered just about every kind of news story there was to cover in Italy: elections, government crises, Mafia trials, terrorism, papal assassination attempts, immigration, political corruption, earthquakes, food, tourism, business and banking. In my first book, a memoir called "My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and Loving) in the Eternal City" , provides a comprehensive – and entertaining – look at the ins and outs of life in Italy a delightful, complicated and sometimes frustrating country. "Deadline Rome: The Vatican Kylix", my first novel, makes ample use of my experiences and observations during my long journalistic career. I hope you enjoy it and if you do, please write a review.