John Murray, 2015.
Review published Sep 2017.
The largest island in the Mediterranean, Sicily has been civilised since 1600 B.C.E. The thrust of this wonderful story is that all this time Sicily has never been governed by Sicilians.
Of course the people of Sicily have gradually evolved over the centuries, intermarrying with first one conqueror, then another. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Normans, and a whole host of European overlords, but never self-government. And always Sicily has been sufficiently different from everywhere else that it ought to have had its own government.
Norwich has been writing histories for over 50 years now, and he held off on this book because the history is so complex and he wanted to say it right.