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Rating: 
Summary: Translationally Challenged
Review: A brilliant book by a wonderful author, this deserved a more thoughtful translation. Many of Buzzati's ideas don't translate easily, but in this version even familiar cycling phrases become muddled by direct, word-for-word translation. By all means, if you love Italy or bicycles or bicycle racing, buy this book, but take your time reading - some paragraphs become clear only after a bit of mental rewriting.
Rating:
Summary: Translationally Challenged
Review: A brilliant book by a wonderful author, this deserved a more thoughtful translation. Many of Buzzati's ideas don't translate easily, but in this version even familiar cycling phrases become muddled by direct, word-for-word translation. By all means, if you love Italy or bicycles or bicycle racing, buy this book, but take your time reading - some paragraphs become clear only after a bit of mental rewriting.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tale of Two Tours
Review: Despite a feeling of something lost in translation, I highly recommend Buzzati's tale of the '49 Giro to anyone interested in Italy, cycling, sports journalism or even World War Two. The book takes the reader the length of Italy from Sicily to the Alps, giving a lyrical look at life in post-war Italy and at times pushing the race into secondary importance. But the race is indeed the story and as a cycling fan I found that the author, who personally admits to a certain ignorance of the sport, had an insight into the race that an aficionado might have overlooked. If you like a mix of fact and fiction, muscle-ache and metaphor, mountain stage heroics and their Homeric interpretations then this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: well written
Review: This book gave quite a good look inside post-war Italy and the caravan of the Giro mid-century. Buzatti's writing, while intended as sports reporting, is also much more. This is not a book written by a cycling fan, but a fan of the sport simply by dint of being Italian, and you can see it in the expectations put upon it's heros. To say it is an unbalanced account would be an understatement- Buzzati had never seen the Giro before beginning these reports and it shows through in his tone, elevating his protagonists, Coppi and Bartali, above the entire peleton and up amongst the gods and heros of Homer. This is sport writing at it's most epic and romantic, and for the subject matter it definitely works. Writing about cycling in Italy feels like it should be passionate and over-blown. (Even if that is, perhaps, a stereotype) The translation was not great, but was balanced enough to give a sense of Buzzati's prose while keeping all of his references and allusions to Italy and Italian history -too many cycling books are dumbed down for english-speaking audiences. That having been said, the writing was still a little bit too clunky, you get the feeling it could have been quite poetic in the right hands. As literary cycling prose this book is quite good as non-fiction, but not quite up there with Tim Krabbe's fictional The Rider.
Rating:
Summary: Great Bon Bons for the Cyclist
Review: This is a book, not just about one of cycling's great events, the Giro, during one of the classic years of that event, 1949. It is a book of literature, of the Italian people recovering from a decade of war, of the duel between the mindset of war being overcome with the temptation of peace, and of the old decorated hero -- Bartoli -- battling time, the inevitable decline of age, and the young Fausto Coppi.Each chapter is a bon bon that I savoured until it was over. Written by Buzzati, an award winning Italian journalist who was covering his first bike race, the book contains revelations and explanations that those who are unfamiliar with cycling will appreciate. For those who have descended twisting roads, at screaming speeds, from within the peloton, there are great tid bits. The dreams of the grisanti (the domestique) one day raising his arms in victory -- NOT! The crazy old one, leaving six hours before the riders start and finishing after dark, determined to conquer the entire course. Age defying time. The home town rider, "in crisis just two days before" who wins the stage in front of his teachers, his family, and the president of his local cycling club who once presented him with his first bike. Read this book! You'll either jump on your bike in fantasy or save for that next flight to Genoa. I am grateful it has finally been translated into English.
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