"The novel begins at a time in the narrator's life when nothing seems to matter; whether he is reading newspaper posters blaring of wartime massacres, lying in bed with his wife or girlfriend, or flipping through the pages of a dictionary it is all the same to him - until he embarks on a journey back to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years.

In traveling through the Sicilian countryside and in variously hilarious and tragic conversations with its people - his indomitable mother in particular - he reconnects with his roots and rediscovers some basic human values."--BOOK JACKET.