Sicily

This immensely likable debut novel from Irish writer Ferdia Lennon opens in Syracuse, south-east Sicily, in 412BC. The city has lately defeated a military expedition from Athens and thousands of surviving invaders have been thrown into nearby quarries to rot. No Syracusans lament their fate until two locals visit one day with an idea to cast the prisoners in a play by Euripides.The two men are Gelon, a melancholy theatre obsessive, and his wisecracking friend Lampo, who narrates the novel in a distinctly un-Sicilian…

Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOOne of the world’s most active volcanoes, Mount Etna, erupted on Sunday – spewing lava and clouds of ash high over the Mediterranean island of Sicily. This image, captured on November 13 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, has been processed using the mission’s shortwave-infrared bands to show the lava flow at the time of acquisition.Standing at an elevation of approximately 11,014 ft (3,357 m), Mount Etna is in an almost…

When Andrea Camilleri died in 2018, at the ripe age of 93, he left not a void but a full and rich granary, something that still feeds the millions of readers who mourned his passing. His Inspector Montalbano series, brought to us through Stephen Sartarelli’s brilliant translations, are among those books that can be read multiple times and still afford the same amount of pleasure. The bonus is watching the TV series. Italian actor and director Luca Zingaretti who plays Inspector Montalbano in the TV series. (Marilla…

KANNUR: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics By Ullekh NP Viking Penguin 2018, 223pp., Rs 499 Reviewed by Shashi Tharoor Kannur (or, as the Brits preferred to call it, Cannanore) is a lovely little town in north Kerala, located in a picturesque seaside setting near some spectacular beaches that ought to have made it a tourist paradise. It is better known, instead, as a town drenched in blood from repeated acts of political violence. Between 1991 and 2016, according to official crime statistics, 45…