The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean History

by Jamie Mackay

Overview

Whether you’re vacationing in Italy or simply an armchair traveler, this guide to the Mediterranean island of Sicily is a dazzling introduction to the region’s rich 3,000-year history and culture.

A rich and fascinating cultural history of the Mediterranean’s enigmatic heart Sicily is at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, and for over 2000 years has been the gateway between Europe, Africa and the East. It has long been seen as the frontier between Western Civilization and the rest, but never definitively part of either. Despite being conquered by empires—Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Hapsburg Spain—it remains uniquely apart. The island’s story maps a mosaic that mixes the story of myth and wars, maritime empires and reckless crusades, and a people who refuse to be ruled.

In this riveting, rich history Jamie Mackay peels away the layers of this most mysterious of islands. This story finds its origins in ancient myth but has been reinventing itself across centuries: in conquest and resistance. Inseparable from these political and social developments are the artefacts of the nation’s cultural patrimony—ancient amphitheaters, Arab gardens, Baroque Cathedrals, as well as great literature such as Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s masterpiece The Leopard, and the novels and plays of Luigi Pirandello. In its modern era, Sicily has been the site of revolution, Cosa Nostra and, in the twenty-first century, the epicenter of the refugee crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786637734
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/13/2021
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	414,735
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence. His work has appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, Frieze and elsewhere. The Invention of Sicily is his first book.

Table of Contents

Map vii

Introduction: The Limits of the West 1

Part I Utopian Fragments

1 The Liquid Continent (800 BC-826 AD) 11

The Colonies of Magna Graecia, Hellenistic Culture, Roman-Byzantine Occupations

2 The Polyglot Kingdom (826-1182) 41

Life in the Emirate, Norman Conquest, Hybrid Architecture

3 The Anti-Christ of Palermo (1182-1347) 67

An Emperor-King, the 'Peaceful Crusade', Sicily's War of Independence

4 A Silent Scream (1347-1693) 91

Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, Spells and Incantations

Part II The Hypocrisies of Nationalism

5 Decadence and Parlour Games (1693-1860) 117

Baroque Towns, Legendary Bandits, Folk Politics

6 A Revolution Betrayed (1860-1891) 143

Italian Unification, the Origins of the Mafia, the Paradoxes of Liberalism

7 A Modernist Dystopia (1891-1943) 173

Political Corruption, Fascism and Futurism, a Colonial Administration

8 The Return of the Mafia (1943-2013) 205

The American Connection, Concrete Cathedrals, Bunga Bunga

Epilogue: 'They Are Our Salvation' (2013-Present) 239

Acknowledgements 249

Notes 251

Bibliography 267

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

05/17/2021

Journalist Mackay debuts with an astute and revealing portrait of Sicily as a vibrant, historically “autonomous” island with a singular culture fashioned by its proximity to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He delves into the establishment of the first Greek settlements around 750 BCE; the golden age of the Greek city-state of Syracuse in the third century BCE, while the rest of the island was engulfed in the First Punic War with Rome; and the ninth-century Islamic conquest that gave rise to Sicily’s UNESCO-recognized Arab-Norman architecture. Skillfully segueing from one period to the next, Mackay packs the narrative with insights into how historical events impacted Sicilian culture. At the height of the Black Plague in the 14th century, for instance, “the bright gold Byzantine mosaics of Sicily’s churches and chapels began to be replaced by darker, stranger pieces” that featured “dog people, humans with multiple heads, unicorns and other more ambiguous monsters.” Mackay also chronicles the history of the Sicilian Mafia, documenting its 19th-century origins, suppression by Mussolini in the 1920s, and post-WWII resurgence, though he stresses the short history of Cosa Nostra on an island where Cicero walked. The author’s keen eye for telling details and lucid prose make this an accessible introduction to a complex and fascinating culture. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A fascinating and imaginative work that should prompt us to reconsider some of the nationalist binaries that continue to structure our world.”
—Daniel Trilling, author of Lights in the Distance

“In this marvelous book, Jamie Mackay brilliantly reinvents Sicily for us as a palimpseste of meanings echoing through its tumultuous history—as a metaphor for the entire world, as the limits of the Western world, as a place of encounter between worlds. His beloved Sicilians engage in a conversation across epochs, as if their unending resistance against attacks on their freedoms or against un-examined imports, from religious dogma, to capitalist logics, to nationalist monocultural narratives or the idea of the modern state, had prepared the ground for their most inspiring exceptionalist stance to date—a stubborn refusal to imitate the rest of Europe and turn those seeking refuge on their shores into ‘others’. I can think of no better demonstration than the story found in these pages that the soul of Europe lies in its outer periphery. ”
—Kalypso Nicolaidis, author Exodus, Reckoning, Sacrifice: Three Meanings of Brexit

“A startling new voice analyzing the history of Sicily from its ancient origins to the present day with forthright clarity and profound sympathy. No excuses for the support of Mussolini or toleration of Cosa Nostra, but convincing explanations, enlivened by Sicilian novels, films, paintings and buildings. A fresh, exciting and eminently readable book.”
—Judith Herrin, author Ravenna

“[Mackay’s] keen eye for telling details and lucid prose make this an accessible introduction to a complex and fascinating culture.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The scope of Mackay’s knowledge and presentation is astounding … glorious and intelligent.”
—Sandra Callard, On Magazine

“An enjoyable canter across a history, and a place, which are entrancing and disturbing by turns.”
—Economist

“Lush and vibrant.”
—Nina Burleigh, Air Mail

“An impressive achievement condensing such a vast array of history, politics and culture, into such a slim and readable book, and it’s a tes-tament to Mackay’s unpretentious writing style that it never feels overwhelming or didactic.”
—Alex Sakalis, openDemocracy

“[A] lucid, sweeping yet detailed history … [Mackay] retells the history of intimacy, intermingling and exchange to bring out the promise and the hope of that past.”
—Marina Warner, Times Literary Supplement

“A brisk account of [Sicily’s] almost three-thousand-year history … [it is exciting] to realize how many fragments of one’s cultural baggage originated in Sicily.”
—Tim Parks, New York Review of Books

“A wonderful, fleet-footed history … profoundly original … it would be hard to conceive of another history of Sicily that does what this book does so well and so concisely.”
—Oscar Rickett, i newspaper

“Fascinating … The Invention of Sicily is the perfect companion to the culture and history of Sicily.”
—Helen Farrell, Florentine

“Excellent … Mackay gives us a refreshingly new interpretation of Sicily’s intriguing and all too frequently tragic history. What really comes through is the author’s subtle understanding and genuine appreciation of the Sicilians themselves … brilliantly entertaining.”
—Philippa Joseph, History Today

“The Invention of Sicily offers a recent corrective to much of the exoticization of Sicily in English-language studies and accounts.”
—Andreas Petrossiants, e-flux

“A rich, critical history.”
—Tribune

From the Publisher