And then, as it happened, I found myself thinking of the “Ephebus of Mozia,” the statue of the young man that I saw in the Whitaker Museum, on the nearly deserted island off the coast between Trapani and Marsala. I pictured it with utter clarity—its grace, its beauty, the way it seems lighted from within—and it struck me that whoever had carved it in the fifth century B.C. had done so either during a period of strife or unrest, or in a brief spell of peace between two outbreaks of violence. And yet the statue had been made, and war had indeed broken out, and the sculpture had been buried, and saved, and unearthed, and recognized as the masterpiece that it is. As I imagined it, radiant and tranquil, in its room in the museum, the very fact of its existence seemed like evidence, like a sign of what Sicily has to tell us if we are willing to listen: that it is necessary to operate on faith and to believe that what we do will, like the beautiful “Young Man of Mozia,” survive and endure.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Francine Prose is the author of ten novels, including Bigfoot Dreams, Primitive People, and Blue Angel, a National Book Award finalist in 2000, and the recent nonfiction work The Lives of the Muses. Her short fiction, which has appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, has been gathered in two collections, Women and Children First and The Peaceable Kingdom. Prose is also a prolific essayist; her pieces have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s (where she is a contributing editor), Elle, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and a PEN translation prize. She lives in New York City.
OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES
JAN MORRIS A Writer’s House in Wales
OLIVER SACKS Oaxaca Journal
W. S. MERWIN The Mays of Ventadorn
WILLIAM KITTREDGE Southwestern Homelands
DAVID MAMET South of the Northeast Kingdom
GARRY WILLS Mr. Jefferson’s University
A. M. HOMES Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill
JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN The Island: Martinique
UPCOMING AUTHORS
JAMAICA KINCAID on Nepal
ROBERT HUGHES on Barcelona
SUSANNA MOORE on Hawaii
LOUISE ERDRICH on Ontario
PETER CAREY on Japan
KATHRYN HARRISON on Santiago de Compostela
ANNA QUINDLEN on London
HOWARD NORMAN on Nova Scotia
BARRY UNSWORTH on Crete
GEOFFREY WOLFF on Maine
PAUL WATKINS on Norway
JON LEE ANDERSON on Andalucia
DIANE JOHNSON on Paris
WILLAM LEAST HEAT-MOON on Western Ireland
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIRECTIONS
Featuring works by some of the world’s most prominent and highly regarded literary figures, National Geographic Directions captures the spirit of travel and of place for which National Geographic is renowned, bringing fresh perspective and renewed excitement to the art of travel writing.
Sicilian Odyssey Page 13
