The Sicilian aristocrat, Lampedusa, wrote the three short stories assembled in this collection, along with his famous novel, The Leopard, in the last two years of his life, starting in 1955. Together, these works paint a majestic picture of a mythical age of Sicily now long gone. In a cafe in Turin, the eponymous professor of the first tale regales a young journalist, (and fellow Sicilian transplant), he has taken under his wing, “If Sicily remains as it was in my time, I imagine nothing good ever happens there. Nothing has for the past three thousand years.” Having lived in the north for the past fifty years, he asks of his young charge, “Tell me about our island. It’s a beautiful place, even if it is inhabited by donkeys. The gods once sojourned there—and perhaps in some endless Augusts they return.” By now, memories of his youth rolling through his mind, the professor continues, “Sicily’s sea is the most vividly colored, the most romantic of any I have ever seen; it’s the only thing you won’t manage to ruin, at least away from the cities. Do the trattorias by the sea still serve spiny urchins, split in half?” Before waiting for a response, he opines, “They’re dangerous as all gifts from the sea are; the sea offers death as well as immortality.” Finally, the professor gives his interlocutor a backhanded compliment of sorts, “Please know that I genuinely care for you: Your ingenuousness touches me, and it seems to me that, as is sometimes the case with the best kinds of Sicilians, you have managed to achieve a synthesis of the senses and reason.”
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