In Sicily

By Norman Lewis

This loving profile of an extraordinary country is based on Lewis's sixty-year fascination with all things Sicilian. From marrying the daughter of a mafioso exile in the 1930s, to his last trip to Sicily in the late 1990s, Lewis watched the island closely and returned frequently to chronicle its pleasures and its pain. His first wartime visit as a soldier led to numerous trips researching his acclaimed study of the mafia, The Honoured Society. This final portrait of the island was written when he was in his early nineties. It interweaves memories of earlier trips with descriptions of Sicily as he now found it, all pinned down with his formidable style and rasping, dry humour. It is the last work of a man described by Graham Greene as 'one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781780601151

Norman Lewis

Norman Lewis is the author of thirteen novels and thirteen works of non-fiction, including Voices of the Old Sea, Golden Earth, and A Goddess in the Stones. He lives in Essex, England.

Reviews for In Sicily

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.