John Domini’s The Archeology of a Good Ragù is a warm and rollicking account of a writer tracing lineages through time, and deep into the heart of Naples, in order to find a path back to himself—and to gain a more robust understanding of his roots. In the layered and complex city of Naples, meditations on art, romance, masculinity, violence, and family secrets collide in this captivating memoir.

I readily confess to a hot passion for John Domini’s memoir, The Archeology of a Good Ragù — his inspired sentences like switchback staircases, his paragraphs sipped like the finest grappa, his chapters a Mediterranean feast. Domini devours Naples, its magic and sensuality and ambiguity, with a gastronome’s vitality, and if you told me Mr. Domini and Elena Ferrante are cousins, I’d say, Of course!

We lovers of Naples are like a secret guild or a society of amateur gourmands. For us, then, John Domini— another prodigal spiritual son of the city— serves up an elaborate Neapolitan dessert which will expand things other than the waistline.

The Archeology of a Good Ragù offers lively and illuminating insights about both the city of Naples and the process of discovering your roots. John Domini’s exquisite prose braids together past and present, revealing the rich strands of memory that connect world history, urban lore, family narratives, and personal transformation. A stirring, remarkable, and multifaceted memoir.

Neither archeology nor autobiography, so much as “an attempt to capture the aroma, flavors, and sounds of the city’s cobblestones. Call it an extended meditation on the Neapolitan.