Sette e Mezzo: Seven and a Half: The Palermo Revolt of 1866

SETTE E MEZZO (originally published in 1952, six years before Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo) is a remarkable novel, unknown outside of Italy and little known even there. It is set in the historical context of the Sicilian rising in Palermo against the new Italian national government during the seven and a half days between 16-22 September 1866. Within this context the author deploys a rich cast of characters: an ageing aristocrat of the ancien r嶲ime, his free-thinking mother, his discontented young wife and her soldier lover, his utopian-minded brother and revolutionary Garibaldian nephew, plus a lecherous official and a comically sinister 幦inence grise. The scenes range from the noble palaces of Palermo with their dinners and balls to the vast empty reaches of the Sicilian countryside and its agrarian communities. We relive the barricades and bombardments and hand-to-hand street fighting in the rabbit-warren boroughs of Palermo, and the book climaxes in a terrifying episode among the thousands of mummified corpses in the catacombs of the Cappuccini.