Sicilian Odyssey
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Francine Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. She writes of the intensity of Sicily, the "commitment to the extreme," where the history is more colorful, the sun hotter, the cooking earthier, the violence more horrific, the carnival more raucous, the politics more Byzantine than other places on Earth, and how much the island can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence and life over death.
Prose examines architectural sites and objects and looks at the ways in which myth and actuality converge. Exploring the intact and beautiful Greek amphitheaters at Siracusa and Taormina, the cathedral at Monreale, the Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, and some of the masterpieces of the Baroque scattered throughout the island, Prose focuses her keen insight to imagine them in their own time, to examine the evolution and decline of the cultures that produced them, and to deconstruct powerful responses each evokes in her.
Illuminated by the author's own photographs, Sicilian Odyssey brings exotic and enigmatic Sicily to life through the prism of its past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If asked to pick the "one quality that seems dependable, immutable, endlessly available" in Sicily, novelist and essayist Prose would choose intensity. It is difficult, she admits, to resist the superlative when describing such a place an inclination that often gets the better of her as she recounts her month-long sojourn on the island. Thankfully, her descriptive excesses are eclipsed by the overall strength of this absorbing travelogue, which melds observation, anecdote, history and myth the last a subject that formed the framework of Prose's previous work, The Lives of the Muses. The author and her companion traveled to Sicily in February 2002, partly to experience its pleasures but also, as a New Yorker in the wake of the September 11 attacks, "to discover what this island has learned and can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence, of life over death." Prose's fatalism is well suited to an island that has lived with death at the hands of foreign invasions and internal brutality for centuries without forgetting how to celebrate life. Driving through Sicily, Prose explores both its beauty and ugliness; facing the grief that so often underlies Sicilian gaiety allows her to come to terms with her newly fragile world. This process enriches Prose's varied, engaging musings on subjects ranging from the simple wonders of Sicilian cooking to the craziness of Carnivale in a culture that can party with the best of them. Her slim but dense volume is a perfect traveling companion for those planning to visit Sicily and an excellent surrogate for those staying at home. B&w photos by author.
