A different kind of book about Sicily that does not focus on the tourist attractions, nor does it marvel at Taormina and Cefalù, Piazza Armerina, or the Valley of the Temples. The author has visited them all and, along the paths—often detours—has perceived a reality that is absent from art and travel guides, a present full of surprises and discoveries that lives in the shadow of overwhelming history. Everyday stories and chance encounters are depicted and collected, snapshots and highlights open up views of a Sicily that is real yet seems foreign, leading from airports and train stations to bars and restaurants, to huts and palaces, into the streets of Palermo and remote mountain nooks, to abandoned sulfur mines and villages erased by earthquakes, to the last city in Italy and even once to a hospital. Literary traces, from Goethe to Sciascia.