Sicily

“Sicily” is an alternative travel guide. It does not contain street maps, does not highlight day trips, rate transportation or list restaurants. Instead, it traces the major villages and towns of Sicily, through writers who have toured them. Many have passed through as soldiers, some were natural travelers, and some were escaping home pressures. All had a lot to say about their environs. And some got actively involved in it.

What Andrew and Suzanne Edwards have leveraged is this remarkable attraction of Sicily for writers. They have tracked down seemingly every writer who visited for three thousand years. They trace visits from ancient Greece and Rome, up to modern America and Britain. The name dropping is impressive, but the research is what is really impressive. Beyond the writer’s name, details from trips, and passages of their writings bring out Sicily in a very different and far more exuberant manner.

The book starts in Palermo in the northwest and works its way clockwise all the way around the island, with abundant tales told by the writers as well as about them, and descriptions of where they stayed and who they met. At the back there are one paragraph profiles of the writers mentioned in the book, like actors in a play. Which is appropriate, since so many of them were storytellers.

There are of course disappointments. Photos are few, even then black and white. There is very little on food, one of the pillars of Sicily’s reputation. There is only one map, at the front, which just pinpoints the villages the book refers to. There is no topography, roads or waterways on it. This is a book to be read with an online map service close by.

It is remarkable that it is even possible to write a literary tour of Sicily. It is even more remarkable that it has been done and is enjoyable.

This immensely enjoyable and comprehensive guide to the literary figures from ancient times to the present who have been inspired by and written about Sicily is a real delight. From Shakespeare to D H Lawrence, Oscar Wilde to Truman Capote, plus local authors such as Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa and Leonardo Sciascia, an amazing number of writers have written about the island and the authors seem to have uncovered them all. Informative, painstakingly researched and written in a lively and accessible style, this book is a must-have for anyone visiting Sicily – or even for the armchair traveller. One of the best literary guides I’ve come across (and I always look for one when I travel) it is also a useful historical and geographical guide, and the wealth of anecdotes and fascinating trivia make it a truly entertaining read.