Mandralisca found himself face to face with a man with an odd smile on his
lips. The ironic, caustic, bitter smile of one who has seen much and knows
much, who has an awareness of the present and an intuition of the future,
who strives to defend himself from the pain of knowledge and the continual
temptation of compassion.

Vincenzo Consolo quotes from Goya, chronicler of political cruelty and
necessity: Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer. Composed of
narrative, letters, depositions and fragments, the novel evokes the hopes
and despairs, false starts and brutal ends of a struggle for change during
the Risorgimento, when Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860 and common folk
believed social as well as political justice would follow.

    Enrico Pirajno, Baron of Mandralisca, fascinated by the arts of his
native Sicily and by its snail-life, collects pictures, sculpture and
molluscs. Gradually this aristocrat is drawn into the struggle, as witness,
inadvertent accomplice, and finally as a participant, concern with justice
over-riding natural reticence and compassion.

    Joseph Farrell translates this haunting tapestry of fiction and
fact, this interplay of texts and voices, with tact: the reader assembles
the tale, infers the connections and is drawn into the action even as the
Baron is, with the confusion of cultural and political loyalties resolving
at last in the most basic loyalty: to the cause of the used, exploited and
oppressed.