Sicily and its heart vibrate in the living pages of the new volume of The Passenger Series. Through research, investigations, reports and stories, we offer a look at the change on the island. Thanks to the Sicilian voices of, among others, Vanessa Ambrosecchio, Evelina Santangelo, Viola Di Grado, Stefania Auci, Piero Melati, Davide Enia. And there is no shortage of external observers, such as Claudia Durastanti
The last piece of the laudable and fascinating series is hot off the press The Passengerproposed by Iperborea, dedicated this time to Sicily.
Many already know the quality of these publications, as is the usual style of this publishing house: for the occasion, the research and investigative project involved leading authors of the island’s literature, but also external, albeit attentive, observers. to the Sicilian reality. Thus was born a truly interesting volume, full of facts, news, numbers, accompanied by the images of the photographer Roselena Ramistella: photos with suffocated lights, dry documentation, not without unusual references.
The obvious and explicit common thread of many of these texts is to propose a look at change, on new perspectives, on the new worlds that the immobile but constantly moving island contains.
Let us then scroll, together, through the rough, porous pages of this beautiful volume. Random.
From Lampedusa to the sack of Palermo
There is the strong text by Fabio Lo Verso on the environmental apocalypse of the industrial centers of Syracuse, mutant forms in the land of myth and there is that by Evelina Santangelo on Lampedusa island-ship, lost and desperate. Also important is Giacomo Di Girolamo’s contribution on the effects of climate change on Sicilian ecosystems, in a land which, let us remember, is located not many hundreds of kilometers from the largest desert on the planet.
And there are the beautiful stories of Viola Di Grado and Vanessa Ambrosecchio.
The first, from a lacerating coming-of-age story, leads to a Sciascian linguistic research, where language explains the characters, environments, desires and hatreds of a population. And he tells us his particular nostos.
Vanessa Ambrosecchio, with her usual grace, instead immerses herself in describing the places around the school where she has been working for years now, immersed in that all-encompassing dimension that is teaching in the south. You talk to us about the sack of Palermo, the crimes, the conveniences but also the needs that produced it. And she talks to us about hidden transformations, about a sort of human and industrial archaeological research, and about the strange story of Giuseppe Silenus, after whom the complex where she teaches at the Arenella in Palermo is named.
From Segesta to unfinished monsters
In the rich booklet of this publication there are many surprises: there is Stefania Auci discovering Segesta and the often forgotten island’s very rich cultural heritage, there is the detailed map of the most contemporary Sicilian literature by Gaetano Savatteri, and there is a nice investigation by Veronica Caprino and Claudia Durastanti on the unfinished monsters scattered around the island and, finally, an oblique journey into the demographic winter of the internal mountains written by Arnon Grunberg.
The architecture of the volume ultimately includes narratives and reportages, within a very well-studied alternation.
Among the most relevant things, we cannot fail to mention Piero Melati’s tragic and ruthless investigation into the new criminal frontier of Palermo, linked to the spread of crack among the miserable and the mafias. Thanks to Melati’s great ability to combine stories of today and stories of yesterday into a single coherent and unsettling tale, we discover new circles of hell within the soul of the city, new horizons for organized crime, new death, and new lives without destiny.
Cinema and music
The Passenger Sicily ends with explorations of cinema and music born within the Sicilian universe. Costanza Quatriglio takes us by the hand among the documentaries to decipher Sicily and talks to us about her, about her, about her vocation for her image. She reminds us of many things, between yesterday and today: the pedagogical season of The octopusthe challenge of the Experimental Cinematography Center, Montalbano but also Kiarostami.
The volume closes with Davide Enia with his noir toponymy of Palermo, and Colapesce who draws up a ranking of essential Sicilian musical things. As is tradition for this series, the proposed playlist is available for listening on Spotify.
I have reached the end of this brief survey. I reread everything in fear of having lost something of what I had written down. It’s all there, after all.
I place the volume in my bookcase, on display, because Sicily, and its heart, certainly vibrate among these thick and lively pages.
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