Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers (The I.B.Tauris Literary Guides for Travellers)

Rising up from the heart of the Mediterranean, Sicily has a rich and ancient history spanning more than 2,000 years. Over 16 invading forces have walked on her shores, a bounty prized by the Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans, among others. Sicily’s violently beautiful landscapes are haunted by this vibrant mix of cultures, and her soil has always been fertile ground for the literary and artistic imagination, since ancient times to today. This compelling literary guide to Sicily is a work of literature itself, revealing the island’s multifaceted personality through the experiences of those famed writers who have managed to get under her skin, including Pindar, Cicero, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Cervantes, DH Lawrence, Coleridge, Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Ezra Pound, and Lawrence Durrell; as well as local authors who have defined the modern Italian novel, including Giuseppe di Lampedusa and Leonardo Sciascia.

Organized by different areas of the island, the book is filled with excerpts from the writers’ works and letters, as well as extensive text features, including several photographs of notable sites on the island, a map of the regions of the island with key sites highlighted, an extensive Author Profiles section with short bios of the writers and their works, a Chronology of Sicily’s cultural and political history, a bibliography for further reading, and an index for handy reference.

A must-have for any literature lover and especially for tourists of the famous island, Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers bears witness to the beauty, pain, and power of the Sicilian cultural landscape through the words of the writers who wrote there, and will help readers discover how the potent mix of influences on the island’s society have been preserved forever in literature.