- Paperback: 300 pages
- Publisher: Picador (7 Sep 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330375520
- ISBN-13: 978-0330375528
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 286,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"One of the greatest writers of travel literature of our century." --P.D. James
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
'Still travelling and writing beautifully' Evening Standard 'Norman Lewis proves he has lost none of his panache, subtle sense of humour or lyrical prose with his latest book, In Sicily... I simply urge you to read this book' Sunday Express
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Norman Lewis's connections with Sicily are deep and personal. Before spending eighteen months in Southern Italy at the conclusion of the Second World War (Naples '44 - an Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth) Lewis had lived in the London house of an elegant Sicilian gambler named Ernesto whose daughter Lewis eventually married. Thus Lewis used his contacts with the the Sicilian section of the British Intelligence Corps to filter news about real estate in Sicily to Ernesto who hoped to repatriate because his London house had been bombed. Writing a book about the Sicilian Mafia proved to be a more devastating process, and perhaps Lewis stayed with it, witness to the deaths by cancer and assassination of Italian friends, because of his near-blood tie. In Sicily, the resulting collection of vignettes, shows over and over again that the Sicilian Mafia is an ancient and ineradicable remnant maintained by poverty, Church and State. For small restauranteurs as for Mafia chieftains, as Lewis's friend Agostino tells him over a dish of illegal small fry in a Palermo seafood eatery, survival is all a matter of paying protection on time. "Laws don't exist in this country." In Sicily is ultimately satisfying for combining poignancy and complexity of a novel with reasoning and cold facts of reportage. --sfjoseph@his.com
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have been a passionate fan of Norman Lewis for years. I own all his books and have read most of them more than once. So, since I live in Sicily, I was more than a little excited when this came out.
Reading it horified me. He has misinterpreted so much of what he saw here. He has misdescribed so many things with such confidence. What is going on?
For example, he talks about one of the severely run down areas of Palermo being full of cramped flats shared by poorly paid "typists." What does he mean? There is no such job as a "typist" any more, not in Sicily, perhaps not anywhere on earth. He also describes a chuch wall covered in English literary quotations, and concludes this graffitti denotes the unusually erudite and refined nature of the inhabitants! This is what school kids do when they have to memorise quotes for their English exams. If he had looked around he would certainly have spotted that the wall was in plain view of some school windows.
He also repeatedly observes one single event and extrapolates it to a cultural phenomenon, using misleading phrases which irritated me immensely: He describes a wife chopping food which the man of the house would later cook, "as is the custom in these parts". Sorry, but no, it isn't. The vast majority of Sicilian men I know absolutely love cooking, but that does not mean it is the "custom" for the man of the house to cook, anywhere in Sicily.
I could go on forever listing inaccuracies and misleading statements in this book, but I shall abstain. I still have immense respect for Norman Lewis for his literary style, but I have to admit that the experience of reading his description of a place and culture I know so well has absolutely rocked my faith in the reliability of his information on any of the places he has written about.
Reading it horified me. He has misinterpreted so much of what he saw here. He has misdescribed so many things with such confidence. What is going on?
For example, he talks about one of the severely run down areas of Palermo being full of cramped flats shared by poorly paid "typists." What does he mean? There is no such job as a "typist" any more, not in Sicily, perhaps not anywhere on earth. He also describes a chuch wall covered in English literary quotations, and concludes this graffitti denotes the unusually erudite and refined nature of the inhabitants! This is what school kids do when they have to memorise quotes for their English exams. If he had looked around he would certainly have spotted that the wall was in plain view of some school windows.
He also repeatedly observes one single event and extrapolates it to a cultural phenomenon, using misleading phrases which irritated me immensely: He describes a wife chopping food which the man of the house would later cook, "as is the custom in these parts". Sorry, but no, it isn't. The vast majority of Sicilian men I know absolutely love cooking, but that does not mean it is the "custom" for the man of the house to cook, anywhere in Sicily.
I could go on forever listing inaccuracies and misleading statements in this book, but I shall abstain. I still have immense respect for Norman Lewis for his literary style, but I have to admit that the experience of reading his description of a place and culture I know so well has absolutely rocked my faith in the reliability of his information on any of the places he has written about.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a short book - 166 pages - and every page is a gem. Nearly every paragraph and certainly all chapters could be read on their own - they make sense, they read beautifully and, more often than not they are very funny. I read Naples'44 years ago and by accident picked up this book and straightaway remembered how brilliantly Lewis writes. I shall now go onto his other books having been a complete idiot not to do so earlier.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brief, but interesting
Gives the author's impressions of the islands people and culture, but I can't really say I found Norman Lewis's work very memorable. It seems rather brief. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mr. John Burley
In Sicily
Norman Lewis was a much underrated writer and his oeuvre would be worth a special feature
Published on 5 April 2009 by MR EDGAR P LLOYD
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
