"The Wine Dark Sea" by Leonardo Sciascia

An amazing collection of short stories by one of Sicily’s best known writers. I absolutely loved this book, and found it hard to put it down, which is probably why I read this in two days. Stories of Sicilian life, subjects ranging from village idiots, mafia dons, marital spats, to dreams of one day going to America. 
 

My absolute favorite stories here are “The Long Crossing”, in which a group of Sicilian peasants give up everything they own in order to pay a boat captain to take them to America - and eventually discovering the shock of their lives; the title story, “The Wine Dark Sea”, in which a man travels by train to his new job in Sicily, sharing his train compartment with a Sicilian family and learning more than he expected; “The Demotion”, in which a venerated saint was recently deemed non-existent by the Church and a perplexed husband who cannot understand why his wife and other women in the town occupy the church in protest - that is until he learns something about a “saint” of his own; and “Giufà”, an almost folkloric tale about a village idiot (based on an old Arabic folktake during Sicily’s Muslim period) who decides to go out hunting for a particular red headed bird only to make a deadly mistake. What follows is nothing short of hilarious. 

 
For those who never read anything from Sciascia, this is the perfect introduction to his work. Highly, highly recommended. 
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