87 books like The Woman Outlaw

This is a different story about a different kind of woman. And no, it's not about the Mafia; that's only a peripheral theme.

The typical novels written in English about Sicily by women are built around themes like a foreign girl going to Italy to find love. This one breaks that mould into a thousand pieces, dealing with familial history and tradition in the context of Sicilian and American society. It actually held my interest.

Leigh Esposito's complex story eclipses most of what came before.

Even an academic tome can be written with sensitivity. Here, the Sicilian angle is Joanna, the daughter who became Queen of Sicily as the wife of King William II.

The author brings us a perception of these women as real people without the kind of adulation or reverence too often directed at royalty. The phrase "crowned in a far country" suits Joanna, who was only eleven when she was betrothed to a man in his early thirties in what today would be called an "age gap" relationship. This is just one of many challenges she faced.

A special study about a special woman.

These short stories about ordinary Sicilian women of the early years of the twentieth century bring us a gritty realism that may bring tears to your eyes.

Not only is this great literature, albeit in translation, but it also provides an insight into the history of Sicilian life and emigration. We usually read about this from the American point of view. Here, it is presented from an Italian perspective. In my opinion, it's useful and informative to read both.

Memoirs authored in recent years tend to get excessively personal, even intimate, and a number have been written by foreign women who end up living in Sicily. 

Theresa Maggio is a bit different because she is the granddaughter of Sicilians, so she already has a keen sense of the culture. She ends up with a fisherman who leads the Mattanza, a method of capturing large tuna in huge nets. Alas, the Mattanza is no longer practiced, but this is an interesting story. There's also a sequel with a focus on visiting small towns. 

This is the novel to read if you want to submerge yourself in Sicily’s culture and history.

I read it during a visit to Italy, and was sucked right into this tale of an aristocratic Sicilian family decaying in the 19th century in the time of Garibaldi’s revolution. I really despised the patriarch Don Fabrizio, and was still fascinated by the choices he had to make to keep his family status in turbulent times.

Once you finish the book, check out the 1963 film starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon.

Steven Price creates a vision of crumbling palaces and waning tradition in this lush novel, and it’s a joy to lose oneself in its wistful poetry.

Set in post-WWII Sicily, this is the true story of an island’s last prince who is desperate to leave a legacy in a world that has already forgotten him. Every page is heavy with loss and longing—I found myself mourning a world that no longer existed, the decadent realm of Italian aristocrats that was shattered by the war, even though I didn’t identify with anything that world stood for. What I could understand, though, was the prince’s desire to create something beautiful among the waste, something that would outlive him. 

Holland is a talented scholar who has honed his skill in providing excellent campaign-level accounts of the war. Thus, among much else, his books include Fortress Malta (2003), The Battle of Britain (2010), Burma ’44 (2016), Normandy ’44 (2019), and this excellent study of the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in 1943. Holland is particularly good at capturing the grittiness of war, and at adding the perspective of individual combatants without being trapped by it. Reads very well and provides a superb campaign-level account that is also tactically adroit.

I knew I was going to love this book the minute the main character, Sicily, learns she’s going to go to a new school at the beginning of middle school.

If you’ve ever been the “new kid,” you will immediately connect to Sicily’s worry about fitting in as well as losing touch with her old friends. This big topic book also layers in other tough subjects as Sicily defends her choice to proudly wear braids—even to her own grandmother, who thinks she shouldn’t be so different from the other kids.

A Black Panamanian, Sicily struggles to honor her race and ethnicity as she teaches her classmates about her culture and identity—a perspective I really appreciated.

Alright, this is not technically a book about WWII letters, but it’s very close, and my favorite historical accounts’ book ever. Just like with wartime correspondence, Ernie Pyle wrote from the battlefield about the daily routine of the regular GI while experiencing it himself. Just like in a personal military letter, you get to know a tired civilian in uniform rather than a multi-medal bearing superhero with a thirst for action. With his exceptional writing, Pyle painted touching and realistic portraits, not of the Generals we've already read all about, but of the simple soldier who simply did his job and won the war with his sweat and blood.

“COMES over one an absolute necessity to move.” Has there ever been a more appropriate opening line to any travel book? D H Lawrence moved to Sicily right after the First World War and from there got the itch to board a ship and visit Sardinia to the north with his wife Frida. He was hoping to find a primitive, pre-modern society, where men were men and women were women. He did indeed find them and was appalled. But delighted too. It’s hard to think of a book with more fun in it, more self-mockery, more pathos, and more poetry. Not to mention the descriptions of Sardinia. To die for.