Page 592 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

Gavin Maxwell The Ten Pains of Death. Maxwell lived in Scopello during the
1950s, and recorded the lives of his neighbours in their own words. There’s much on
Sicilian small-town life and poverty, and sympathetic portraits of traditional festivals
and characters. His God Protect Me from My Friends is a sympathetic biography of
the notorious bandit Salvatore Giuliano, ripe with intrigue and double-dealing.

Peter Robb Midnight in Sicily. The Australian Robb spent fifteen years in the
Italian south tracing the contorted relations between organized crime and politics.

Here, he focuses on the structure of the Mafia, the trials of the bosses in the 1980s, the
high-profile assassinations that ensued, and the trial of Andreotti, providing deep
insights into the dynamics of Sicilian society.

Alexander Stille Excellent Cadavers. An important book tracing the modern fight
against the Mafia as led by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, whose
assassinations in 1992 finally sparked the Italian state into action.

NOVELS ABOUT SICILY

Allen Andrews Impossible Loyalties. Fast-moving narrative of an Anglo-Sicilian
family caught up in the turmoil of World War II, containing an authentic portrait of

prewar Messina society.

Michael Dibdin Blood Rain. Dibdin’s Venetian detective, Aurelio Zen, is an
idiosyncratic loner, always up against the Italian state and society in an unequalled
series of crime novels. Here, Dibdin sends him to Sicily, with dark consequences for
all concerned, and offers the only glimpse you are ever likely to have of Catania’s
long-closed Museo Civico.

Simonetta Agnello Hornby The Marchesa; The Almond Picker. From aristocratic
nineteenth-century Palermo to 1960s’ village life, Hornby’s bestselling Sicily novels
are full of subtle intrigue, voluptuous imagery and period detail.

Norman Lewis The March of the Long Shadows. An affectionate novel set in
postwar Sicily, dealing with the Separatist movement, the bandit Giuliano and a whole
cast of endearing characters. The Sicilian Specialist is Lewis’s Mafia thriller, which
flits from Sicily to the US to Cuba on the trail of a Mob assassin.

Dacia Maraini The Silent Duchess. The tale of a noble eighteenth-century family
seen through the eyes of a young duchess – beautifully written and dripping with
authentic detail. Bagheria, meanwhile, is a delightfully engaging memoir of Maraini’s
childhood in the town of the title.

Lily Prior La Cucina. Subtitled a “novel of rapture”, this chronicles the romance

between a spinster librarian from Castiglione and an enigmatic English chef. Drawn