Autobiography, novel, theatre chronicle, local history, political satire and much more, this new book by Franco Ungaro is remarkable for the richness of its subjects and, even more, for the experimentalism that breaks up the narrative contents, mixing and aggregating them with a pleasant logical-temporal disorder within an open and fluid structure.
A "liquid" book, a kind of kaleidoscope or narrative labyrinth where Arianna's thread is the author's steady and coherent point of view, the strong moral tension that encourages the polemical vis and the relentless aesthetic sense of somebody who still believes that beauty will save the world.
History and local chronicle, autobiographical tales, song texts, proverbs, refined quotes from poets and writers, diary pages, reflections on theatre and art, journey recollections, love stories and tales of the underworld, cultural proposals, Italian and dialect following each another in an apparent disorder in this small hotchpotch like the tesseras of a mosaic, all these things draw a disquieting image of a South that does not want or does not know how to be renewed.
Great reflection is given to the town of Lecce or, rather, to the so-called "Leccesità" through a merciless criticism of the way of thinking and culture of its ruling class that persists in defending a mythical grandeur against any illusion of change, and through the denunciation of the responsibilities of its political class suffering from provincialism and that, in many occasions, has proven incapable to face the contemporary challenges.
Following the teachings of Pasolini and Bene, often mentioned, Ungaro returns, with more vigour and new argumentations, to the fierce polemic against the short-sightedness of the national and local cultural politics and to the struggle for a profound renewal of the costumes which he had already voiced in his previous book Dimettersi dal Sud (Resigning from the South oppure Dismissing the South... non so bene neanch' io).
Once again, the love-hatred for this land and this town animates the civil commitment and the cultural fights of an experienced theatre operator, well known and appreciated in Italy as well as abroad, who still has not resigned himself to the merciless logic of the market and who does not want to accept the vulgar and wild idea that "culture does not feed you".

                                                                                    Lilli Giumelli

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Reviews

Lecce Sbarocca is a unique and rare book... its fluent prose gives voice to a variety of different subjects with sublime skill.
Paola Bisconti, Salentoinlinea.it

Lecce ‘sbarocca' within the parallels that are the figure zero (qui non so come tradurre perché non capisco bene tutta la frase...) of its " Leccesità", collected in this book like the beads of a broken necklace. These ‘notes' have the taste of blood, a feeling of uneasiness as urgent as its language.
Luisa Ruggio, il Paese nuovo

...the language, on the other hand, is that of a pamphlet, or of a true poisoned declaration of love-hatred for Lecce, which is like a cold stepmother.
Fabrizio Versienti, Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno

A love full of bitterness. Like an uncomfortable cradle, the land that holds our existence cannot be forgiven anything, least of of all being ungenerous, full of days that could have been better, of answers different from the ones we had been waiting for, of people foreign to us.
Claudia Presicce, Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia

A book which makes us meditate on the incessant construction of metaphors built by a fake society. A very interesting book easy to read and explosive like a coloured firework.
Egidio Pani, Contrappunti, gennaio 2012

The art of writing in Lecce sbarocca lives on continuous "attacks" starting anew, page after page, in a narrative continuum of different points of view. What most strikes the reader is the elegy of the past - how could it be otherwise? Are we not romantic human beings?)
Mauro Marino, Il paese nuovo

Lecce sbarocca is a revelation in every aspect: the writing, firm an colourful, its surprising rhythm, the narration, light and concise, the meticulous description of details and memories... Franco Ungaro rings up and down the curtain on a series of scenes, either long or short, on the social and political reality as well as on the emotional and intimate moments, on monologues, on "told stories" and "lived stories". Lecce sbarocca by Franco Ungaro is a casket full of memories and thoughts, impulses and instincts, moods, action and reaction.
Dario Quarta, quiSalento, gennaio 2012

Franco Ungaro's writing is smooth, clear and precise, (thanks to a daily discipline and a constant research that, valuing Time, has made him able to give value to words (qui fatico a capire il significato e pertanto la traduzione è molto imprecisa... tralascerei ).
This book shows that we can really walk inside this town if we are moved by dance. Lightness of dance. Power of dance.
Vito Antonio Conte, Il paese nuovo gennaio 2012

Franco Ungaro skilfully moves along different literary genders, by mixing their specific languages and obtaining a multiple, experimental writing. The text is punctuated with quotes from poets (Vittorio Pagano, Vittorio Bodini, Patrizia Cavalli) and song texts (Nirvana, Sud Sound System, Jim Morrison and Patty Smith) and also with cartoons (One Hundred and One Dalmatians). The author keeps coming on stage and disappearing, using at times the more direct first person, at times the more distant third person, like in another story - contemporary and independent, except for occasional intersections with the autobiographical and civil context - the story of beautiful Teresita and her family, the Rojo family «full of kind and generous women and evil men» who will fall victim to drugs and the mafia racket in a crescendo of misfortunes like in Verga....In Lecce Sbarocca we feel the same southern and anti-southern indignation of Ortese and Luigi Compagnone....
Nicola Signorile, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, febbraio 2012

Lecce Sbarocca, published by Besa, is a very interesting book. A work sui generis, suspended between novel, autobiography, chronicle and political satire. I liked it because the author, without sparing himself, uses the language like a sword, experimenting a wonderful metissage of Chaos and Order. The book, full of moral tension and aesthetic sense, expresses the strong belief that Beauty will save the world.
Vander Tumiatti, libri-bari.blogautore.repubblica.it

[...] Roaming a personal and political, historical and contemporary, local and international space, Ungaro delicately records the signs of the present as truths of the past and the signs of the past as anticipation of the present, delineating a picture of Salento where it is played a subtle but bitter game between the real identity and the possible one.
On the one hand the compensation of the sense of loss, fruit of historical immobility and marginality , with the conviction, full of bad faith, to have a cultural and historical leading role. It is the "micro-megalomania" , as Carmelo Bene called it: here's the Big Identity of Lecce. [...] If the Earth has become a group of hinterlands depressed for being like that or deceiving themselves of the contrary, the claim from Ungaro of the space-time perifericity as opportunity to open up to the world can speak, and it really does, to everybody, even to those that don't know what is "la via delle Giravolte" (Capers route) in Lecce. Raffaele La Capria has recently reminded the splendid phrase by Proust "psychology was born in the provinces" . Psychology as capacity of analysis, attention to details, capacity to not to distract without reason; and provinces as space where something can still happen. It doesn't stop then to wheel around, to propose itself as a breviary for everybody and nobody, this book by Ungaro, this curious and passionate intellectual, local but not provincial [...]

Vittorio Gaeta, Quotidiano di Lecce

The brief and cutting reflections by Ungaro make clearly see how distant are the pompous definitions of "Lecce as door to Europe" or "Lecce Euro-Mediterranean capital" , of those that however left the city in the glass bell below mentioned, from the actions, the passions, the travels, the real life of those that every day put themselves in a untiring cultural activism to make Lecce a place opened to contaminations from Mediterranean, the same that in the past have already modelled that "baroque" that today is proposed as keyword for a developing tourist economy. 
Stefano Savella www.puglialibre.it

A thumping anaphora articulates the thick wise-poem that Franco Ungaro dedicated to Salento's provincial capital....Ungaro's models are heterogeneous, pop and very cultured, they go from Shakespeare to Crudelia de Mon. From the same source they rise up vice and virtue: the enchanting dark of its courts coincides with the illegal city that acts on the sly and unscrupulously, while "trastula" is a cunning act neither innocent nor criminal...The autobiography goes well with a delighting portraiture...and with the anthropological sketch...Maybe to show a real love for the South it needs to hate it a bit...
Filippo La Porta, Il Sole 24 ore 5 agosto 2012