In Sicily

In Sicily is a loving take on an extraordinary island, based on Norman Lewis's sixty-year-long fascination with all things Sicilian. Few places on earth have escaped the singular eye of Norman Lewis, but always, in the course of his long career, he has come back to Sicily. From his first wartime visit to a land untouched since the Middle Ages through his frequent returns, he has watched the island and its people as they have changed over the years.

Dedicated to a Sicilian journalist killed by a Mafia bomb, he rarely lets us forget the presence of organised crime. We benefit from his friendships with policemen, journalists, and common people. Moreover, he writes beautifully of landscape and language, of his memories of his first father-in-law (professional gambler, descendant of princes and member of the Unione Siciliana), of Sicily's changing sexual mores, of the effects of African immigration, of Palermo and its ruined palaces, and of strange superstitions, of witches and bandits and murder.