Conversations in Sicily

Particularly reminiscent of Knut Hamsun's great novel Hunger, Conversations in Sicily is a strange, paradoxical work that echoes the existentialist concerns of Camus' fiction while capturing vividly the heat and sounds and smells of southern Italy. The novel begins at a time in the unnamed narrator's life when nothing seems to matter. He is filled with a deep sense of ennui and feels disconnected from all that surrounds him. That is until he embarks on a journey to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. Alane Mason's new translation succeeds wonderfully in bringing this evocative and brilliant novel alive. It is a superb work of fiction, one of the great novels of anti-fascism and a book that is sure to astound contemporary readers for its modernity, lyricism, originality and freshness