Short stories
The Wine-Dark Sea
Il mare colore del vino
Leonardo Sciascia · 1973
Synopsis
Thirteen stories written between 1959 and 1972 and arranged in the order in which they were written, almost all set in Sicily. In the one that gives the collection its title, an engineer from the North travels by train from Rome to Sicily with a Sicilian family and becomes fond of the children and of a young relative, Dina. Others tell of peasants cheated at the moment of emigrating, an adultery given over to a town's gossip, two rival neighbouring towns, the mafia.
Context
The collection appeared in 1973. The poverty of the people and the Mafia allied with the local notables and the Church are treated in it with satirical humour and biting irony, between village comedy and darker stories. It appeared in French under the title “La Mer couleur de vin”, reissued in the collection L'Imaginaire; Avril Bardoni translated it into English in 1985 under the title “The Wine-Dark Sea”, reissued by New York Review Books in 2000.
Who it is for
Thirteen short stories to be read separately and in whatever order one likes, in a dry, incisive prose.
Prizes and reception
According to its American publisher, the author considered this collection the best of what he had written in the short-story genre.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.