Giovanni Verga’s masterful portrayal of a family of Sicilian fishermen in the late nineteenth century is the story of an ancient society in which both egalitarianism and hierarchy coexist, partly because everyone is on the brink of poverty to some extent. It is also a society undergoing irreversible change as the free market encroaches and brings with it not more equality but more hierarchy based on dubious practices which replace an ingrained and functional morality with a moral vacuum. This process has not been completed and the book could be considered a warning to future generations.

However this is not a judgemental novel and it follows the precepts of verismo, the Italian version of realism influenced by French naturalism but also distinctive, particularly in Verga’s case. The author also adopted the recent practice of free indirect discourse but often skilfully turned it into a choral voice representing the values of the society he depicts.

Sicily has often attracted outside attention, but mostly its society and complexities have been misrepresented. The Malavoglias is not only a magnificent classic unjustly ignored in the Anglosphere but also an extraordinary and detached examination of a particular society suffering from a moral malaise not so different from our own, although ours is a malaise of declining affluence. It therefore has as much to say about the human condition today as it had to the very different society depicted in these pages.

Verga’s prose is rightly acknowledged as distinctive and compelling. This innovative novel embraces readers by treating them as locals who know the village, its people but not the story. It observes that society from inside that society.