Paul Bryant's Reviews > Conversations in Sicily

Absolutely no idea what this one was all about. It wandered from amiable comedic whimsy into poetical landscapery (perfectly nice) and then into manic repetition (perfectly irritating) :

P143 :

It’s a shame to wrong the world

What are you, a worldly person or one who wrongs the world?

Aren’t you someone who wrongs the world?

Sometimes we confuse the petty things of the world with wrongs to the world.

(Then for a whole page, nothing about wronging the world. But then )

P145

Earth not yet contaminated by the world’s wrongs, the wrongs that take place on the earth

Yes, my friend, the world has been wronged

P146

The world has been wronged

He’s suffering the pain of the wronged world

P147

And he’s suffering the pain of the wronged world

The world has been badly wronged

(Building up to the final crescendo)

P148

Our friend knows that we’re suffering the pain of the wronged world

The world is big and beautiful but it has been badly wronged

Everyone suffers each for himself, but not for the world that has been wronged

I am writing down the pains of the wronged world

It doesn’t stop there, but I will spare you the wronged worlds on page 149 (three times) and 150 (twice). There is clearly something going on here which went whizzing over my head. This novel is supposed to be in one sense a cryptic covert criticism of Mussolini’s Fascist regime, but I did not get any of that, and I did not get what all this strange repetition was for. So I am thinking that I am not the right reader of this oddball novel. But it is in 1001 Books you Should Read Because We Say So