Author Description

A popular Australian comic novel written by John O'Grady under the pseudonym "Nino Culotta", the name of the main character of the book. Giovanni 'Nino' Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who comes to Australia as a journalist, employed by an Italian publishing house which it's a business that is going under without him knowing. Nino arrives in Sydney to write articles about Australians and their way of life for those Italians that might want to emigrate to Australia. In order to learn about real Australian working class society, Nino takes up a job as a labourer in the construction business. The comedy revolves around his clumsy but endearing interactions with people and his attempts to understand English as it was spoken in Australia by the working classes in the 1950s and 1960s. It's sort of a textbook English vs on the street reality lingo.