A review by tylawrencium
Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History by John Julius Norwich
2.0
I have deeply mixed feelings. On the one hand, Norwich's set himself a massive task, writing a cohesive narrative history of an island that has often been on the fringes of other, better-known empires and events, rarely truly the master of his own destiny. And to his credit, Norwich has a knack for homing in on the characters, anecdotes and events that are most likely to capture a reader's attention.
That said, Norwich has many glaring flaws as a historian. He wrote this book well into his eighties, and his attitudes towards some of his subjects make that unsurprising. He can be fairly sexist towards the women who come across his pages, when he acknowledges their influence at all. However, the way in which he's most glaringly a man and historian of his era comes across in the sweeping generalizations, offered with little to no evidence, that he repeatedly makes about how different races, particularly the Arabs, influenced the island--he repeatedly alludes to various troubles being due to "the oriental character" of certain men, and implies that the mafia's rise was rooted in the Arab conquest of Sicily nearly a millennium before, without offering any plausible causation at all. That failing means we never get to hear a more full exploration of how and why corrupt institutions seem to have thrived in Sicily in particular. Those clear prejudices, combined with his failure to offer anything beyond a "great man" account of the island, makes it difficult to recommend wholeheartedly.
That said, Norwich has many glaring flaws as a historian. He wrote this book well into his eighties, and his attitudes towards some of his subjects make that unsurprising. He can be fairly sexist towards the women who come across his pages, when he acknowledges their influence at all. However, the way in which he's most glaringly a man and historian of his era comes across in the sweeping generalizations, offered with little to no evidence, that he repeatedly makes about how different races, particularly the Arabs, influenced the island--he repeatedly alludes to various troubles being due to "the oriental character" of certain men, and implies that the mafia's rise was rooted in the Arab conquest of Sicily nearly a millennium before, without offering any plausible causation at all. That failing means we never get to hear a more full exploration of how and why corrupt institutions seem to have thrived in Sicily in particular. Those clear prejudices, combined with his failure to offer anything beyond a "great man" account of the island, makes it difficult to recommend wholeheartedly.