The Malavoglias

Giovanni Verga's masterful portrayal of Sicilian fishermen
in the late nineteenth century is the story of an ancient society in which both
egalitarianism and hierarchy coexist, partly because everyone is on the brink
of poverty to some extent. It is also a society undergoing irreversible change
as the free market encroaches and brings with it not more equality but more
hierarchy based on dubious practices which replace an ingrained and functional morality
with a moral vacuum. The process has not been completed and the book could be
considered a warning to future generations.



However this is not a judgemental novel and it follows the
precepts of verismo, the Italian
version of realism influenced by French naturalism but also distinctive,
particularly in Verga's case. The author also adopted the innovative practice
of free indirect discourse but often skilfully turned it into a choral voice
representing the values of the society he depicts.



Sicily has often attracted outside attention, but mostly its
society and complexities have been misrepresented. This English version of The Malavoglias is not only a
magnificent classic unjustly ignored in the Anglosphere but also an
extraordinary and detached examination of a particular society suffering a
moral malaise not so different from our own, although ours is a malaise of
declining affluence. It therefore has as much to say about the human condition
today as it had to the very different society depicted in these pages, which
was going in the opposite direction.