The Island in Writing
The island of sun has ever charmed the travelers who visited it. First and foremost Ulysses, whose adventure has influenced the literature of the island and left traces in the works by D’Arrigo and Consolo.
Irony and sarcasm are the main ingredients of the works by Bufalino and Brancati, which narrate the philosophy of the inhabitants and describe the myths of the island.
Odyssey (IX-VII century BC.) by Homer
One of the sets of Odysseus’ archetypal voyage is Sicily, where the hero and his crew, starved by the long journey, feasted on the cattle sacred to the Sun and therefore were punished. Left “the land of the sun, blessed by mankind”, they were swallowed up by the stormy sea.
Only the hero survived, and in turn punished with a long lasting wandering to find his way back home. It is worth a note the striking description of the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis, which make frightful the crossing of the Strait of Messina.
Aeneid (29-19 cent, BC.) by Virgil
As well as Odysseus, Aeneas, the hero of the “pietas”, halted in Sicily. On the island Aeneas’father, Anchises, died. In Erice the hero celebrated the games in honor of his dead father.
I Malavoglia (1881); Mastro Don Gesualdo
(1889) by Giovanni Verga
I Malavoglia, manifesto of Italian Verismo, narrates the misfortunes leading to ruin of a fishing family living in Aci Trezza (CT). Mastro don Gesualdo describes the social rising of a bricklayer from Catania. Although not loved back, he got married with an impoverished noble woman, Bianca Trao. But he never succeeded in taking part of his wife’s social life and eventually died alone and mocked by the servants in the palace of his wife’s family.
Other works by Giovanni Verga:
Little Novels of Sicily
Life in the Country
Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories
A Mortal Sin 
Storia Di Una Capinera
La Lupa 
The Viceroys (1884) by Federico De Roberto
Renowned historical romance set in Sicily in the late nineteenth century, it provides a detailed description of facts and characters of the time of the unity of Italy.
I Vicerè is focused on the noble family Uzeda from Catania, lacerated by interior conflict, and on the struggles to maintain their ancient privileges intact.
Novelle per un Anno (1922) by Luigi Pirandello
Pirandello’s short stories were first published separately and then gathered together in one volume, providing an overview of the main features and themes of the author.
His sharp look focused on the grotesque in the daily life, by destroying the masks which hide suffering identities.
Pirandello could analyze the depths of human psyche going beyond the empty conventions of the well-to-do bourgeoisie. A large number of short stories are set in Sicily.
Other works by Luigi Pirandello:
The Oil Jar and Other Stories 
The Late Mattia Pascal 
Six Characters in Search of an Author 
Absolutely Perhaps 
The Notebooks of Seratino Gubbio 
Il Berretto a sonagli
Eleven Short Stories
Liola, Cosi è (se vi Pare)
Acque e Terre (1930) by Salvatore Quasimodo
It is the first collection by Quasimodo: the two elements, water and earth, delimit the borders of the author’s birthplace: Sicily, beloved although lost.
Other works by Salvatore Quasimodo:
Complete Poems
Conversations in Sicily (1941) by Elio Vittorini
Returning to the island turns out to be the occasion of rediscovering the roots of mankind. The novel describes the symbolic query for man’s origins and make visible the scars of the world, forcing mankind to take on responsibility.
Other works by Elio Vittorini:
Women on the Road
Don Giovanni in Sicilia (1941) by Vitaliano Brancati
Giovanni Percolla dragged out an idle and peaceful life in Catania, cuddled by his three sisters and involved in his friends’ void talks about women. He left Catania to experience love in Milan, where he completely overturned his existence, but he never ceased to feel the alluring call of his birth land. It is a sharp portrait of the prevailing "male chauvinism" in a Sicilian town, where “talking about women gives more pleasure than the women themselves”.
Other works by Vitaliano Brancati:
The Lost Years
Bell' Antonio
The Leopard (1958) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The novel is concerned with the decadence of Sicilian nobility and the raising of bourgeoisie after the Thousand Army’s landing. It is focused on the charismatic character of Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, who realized and awaited the coming ruin of his rank and his family. It is a portrait of Sicily and its inhabitants.
Other works by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa:
Siren and Selected Writings
The Day of the Owl (1961) by Leonardo Sciascia
This short novel about the mafia is also a mesmerizing demonstration of how that organization sustains itself. It is both a beautifully written story and a brave act of denunciation. A dark-suited man is shot as he runs for a bus in the piazza of a small town. The investigating officer is a man who believes in the values of a democratic and modern society, and soon finds himself up against a wall of silence and vested interests.
Other works by Leonardo Sciascia:
The Wine Dark Sea
Equal Danger 
The Knight and Death & One Way or Another
The Moro Affair
Sicilian Uncles
To Each His Own
Sicily as Metaphor
The Council of Egypt
1912 + 1
Blind Argus (1984) by Gesualdo Bufalino
It is winter in Rome. The main character remembers episodes of his youth in Modica in the summer of the year 1951. Lost loves recall an ancient world described with irony and regret at the same time.
Other works by Gesualdo Bufalino:
Night's Lies
Tommaso and the Blind Photographer
A Plague-spreader's Tale
The Silent Duchess (1990) by Dacia Maraini
The novel is set in Sicily, in the early eighteenth century.
Marianna Ucria, a deaf and dumb little girl, was married off at the age of thirteen with an old uncle. She gave birth to many children, grew a woman, discovered the beauty of reading and became acquainted with the philosophical theories which were diffused throughout Europe. When her husband died, she managed to hold the reins of her own life. It is the story of Marianna’s emancipation, an unforgettable heroin described with a particular attention to her private and interior emotions.
Other works by Dacia Maraini:
Woman at War
Traveling in the Gait of the Fox
Only Prostitutes Marry in May
My Husband
Darkness 
Isolina
L’Olivo e l’Olivastro (1994) by Vincenzo Consolo
The title is a quotation from the Odyssey, a motto which highlights the common origin of the wild and the cultivated plant, the human and the inhuman. As the main character returned to his birthplace in Sicily, he went through places which once used to be the country of the true civilization and culture, but turned out to be inhabited by wickedness. The novel focuses on the passage from a country society to the modern one.
The Terracotta Dog (1998) by Andrea Camilleri
Mafia murder in Vigata, an imaginary and metaphoric little town in Sicily. The well-known detective Salvo Montalbano investigates and examines the clues. He succeeds in deciphering a message written in a code which he already knows. But the murder leads to another one, dating back to fifty years before. As the previous novels by Camilleri, the language is marked by vernacular words and expressions.
Other works by Andrea Camilleri:
The Scent of the Night 
Excursion to Tindari 
Voice of the Violin 
The Snack Thief
The Shape of Water
Rounding the Mark 
The Patience of the Spider
The Paper Moon
The Smell of the Night
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