THE INVENTION OF SICILY: A Mediterranean Odyssey, a title that truly says every last thing about the book within

THE INVENTION OF SICILY: A Mediterranean Odyssey
JAMIE MACKAY
Verso Books
$26.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A fascinating cultural history of this most magical of islands.

Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by Phoenicians and Greeks, Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, Spanish and French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture.

In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places. From its pivotal position in the development of Greek and Roman mythology, and the beautiful remnants of both the Arab and Norman invasions, through to the rise of the bandits and the Cosa Nostra, The Invention of Sicily charts the captivating culture and history of Sicily.

Mackay weaves together the political and social development of the island with its fascinating cultural heritage, discussing how great works including Lampedusa’s masterpiece The Leopard and its film adaptation by Visconti, and the novels of Leonardo Sciascia, among many others, have both been shaped by Sicily’s past, and continue to shape it in the present.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sicily's thousands of years of documented history can't be done justice in a shortish survey book. It can, however, do the reader who loves Italy and longs for a Sicilian vacation a very big solid by explaining a bit about why Sicily is not like the rest of Italy. There is a significant prejudice against Sicilians, and Southerners more generally, in Italy as a whole...no country is without internecine conflict...but the reasons go back a very long way.

Starting from its origins as a Greek colony, Sicily has been fought over by outsiders for millennia. Different Greek city-states, Phoenicians, Normans on Crusade taking it from Arabs...if you want to understand how Sicilian culture gave rise to the ultimate Family, the Mafia, insulated from the rest of the world, look no further than its long history of being the prize in other peoples' wars.

Italy the current nation-state did not even exist until 1860. After that Unification, the country pretty much ignored the agrarian island. Riots and rebellions, official neglect and church corruption, all led to the rise of the chaotic present in which the Cosa Nostra/Mafia/organized crime has acted as a kind of de facto government substitute. The present-day refugee crises have had a powerful impact on the island's rickety infrastructure and led Sicilians to harden their opinion that the rest of Italy is not interested in helping them cope with this problem not of their own making...again.

The book is written very ably, and has a deft touch on the topics it does cover. It does not pretend to authoritative stature as a major history. It is clear about its purpose as a survey of a long, long history of a much-put-upon place. It will give Italophiles bad wanderlust, and spark curiosity in most history buffs. Any place that has Archaic Greek, Byzantine, Golden Age Muslim, Byzantine, medieval Norman, Spanish, and Catalan ruins and buildings still in use is a place very much worth getting to know. Don't go in expecting a deep dive into any one period's history, and this book will surprise, delight, inform, and astonish you.

But seriously...no images? *tsk*