Who better than Edmonde Charles Roux could adapt the memories of Fulco Di Verdura, a Sicilian noble? No one. The novelist, author of “Oublier Palerme,” this time takes us to Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century.
We feel the atmosphere of the “The Leopard,” of that aristocracy where all were more or less united by kinship, visiting each other. Sicily with its palaces, villas, gardens, flavors, this society, now vanished in the European suicide of the Great War (1914-1918), all of this is restored to us.
We accompany the grandmother, the authoritative mistress of the house; Fulco, her grandson, lives in his bubble, in this preserved world where he has built his childhood universe. Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura, was born in 1899; at the age of 77, he writes his childhood memories, a very short period as it ends in 1912. The grandmother has died, and they must leave the villa.
Edmonde Charles Roux thus delivers, with her great talent, the memories of a Sicilian little boy, memories recalled by a gentleman in the autumn of his life.
A book or rather a guide to Palermo, the aristocratic Palermo when Europe was also aristocratic. A whole era is rediscovered with immense pleasure.
Thierry Jan
Literary Café: A Sicilian Childhood by Edmonde Charles-Roux
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