Reviews for In Sicily

The average rating for In Sicily based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-15 00:00:00 Michael Greenspon Sicily is an island that Norman Lewis grew to love after he first visited there during the war. He married the daughter of a Sicilian Mafiosi and returned many times over a sixty-year period. The mafia was the theme of his first book on the island and this one is dedicated to a journalist, Marcello Cimino, killed by a bomb. This book is an account of his return to the island in the late 1990s and is partly a love letter to the place and partly a lament to the current state of affairs. He nostalgically looks back to the past and happy times spent on there, revisits old haunts and catches up with friends all over the island. At this time the mafia is still a significant force in the island and by travelling around with the locals, he comes across their nefarious activities. However this is a time of change; their iron grip, along with that of the church and landowners under the feudal system is beginning to lessen. But if you know where to look, you can still see ancient rituals that predate even the Roman period. There is something about Lewis's writing that makes this a please to read. He has a falcon's eye for detail and has the language to paint an evocative scene of the places he visits in just a few sentences. Kind of wish I had read The Honoured Society before this, but I still have that treat for another day.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-05 00:00:00 Debbie Murphy Norman Lewis writes of Sicily: "[T]his is a Mediterranean island where the majority of public happenings are seen in one way or another to be bizarre." No question, it's a weird place. The book is an overview of Sicily's peculiarities, with special emphasis on how and why the Mafia ("the Honoured Society") was able to flourish there. Much of the Mafia's success was directly related to the extreme poverty of most of the island's inhabitants. Lewis' subtle wit is conspicuously missing from this selection, hence my removal of one star. I have no other complaints. The book was thoroughly fascinating and informative. Although apparently unconfirmed, I found this tidbit from page 62 particularly interesting: "An investigator into the origins of the word mafia was of the opinion that it dates back to the Norman conquest of the island and is derived from ma fia--the 'place of refuge' of Arab peasants of the times, when they were rounded up for slavery on the invaders' new estates."