The Anthony Burgess chalet at Via Cantonale 63, Savosa. Savosa is a district outside Lugano with delightful views of the lake. Burgess wrote ‘A Mouthful of Air’ and many other works here.
Burgess writes in ‘You’ve Had Your Time’, the second volume of his autobiography: ‘Why…do we spend some months every year in Ticino? Chiefly because we are crowded out by books, the Monaco summer, heralded by the Grand Prix, is oppressive, and we have a fancy for air well above sea level, mountain crests with occasional snow on them, the sense of space.’
”I am very much in Europe here in Lugano….Switzerland…is not quite Europe: it remained aloof from Europe’s last agony, as did Ireland…’
Article by Burgess on Lugano: He writes: ‘I have a chalet about two miles from Lugano. This means that I am in semirural Ticino, looking down on the lake….a very well-kept town….Swiss dignity and no vulgarity….No hawker will accost you, no corner-boy rob you, no prostitute seek to allure you.’
Burgess writes in YHYT (p382): ‘Let us go downstairs again, there to be insulted, in note, telegram or the spoken dialect of Palermo, by the ice cream man [neighbour] who objects to our mode of parking the Mercedes, belatedness in sweeping away snow or autumn leaves, loudness of our “televisore” after ten at night while his son Fabio is sleeping, the tearing open of our plastic “poubelle” bags by the male cats which howl after his unspayed female. He is soon to be a local councillor…’
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