About the Book
Sicilian Avengers is the first English translation of Luigi Natoli’s I Beati Paoli, originally published in 239 installments in the Giornale di Sicilia from May 6, 1909, to January 2, 1910. Natoli published the novel, as well as more than twenty-five serial novels, under the pseudonym William Galt. It was not until the publication of the Flaccovio edition in 1971 that his actual name was restored as the author of his epic work.
The story unfolds during a turbulent period of the island’s history…
When four dynasties followed one another in succession: Spain, Savoy, Spain again, and finally Austria; a period when the pomp, magnificence, and unfettered power of the aristocracy reached new heights, and when citizens were persecuted by the Inquisition and subjected to horrific tortures. Against this backdrop Natoli recounts the tale of The Beati Paoli, a secret sect of avengers who mete out their own form of justice in order to protect the weak and oppressed from an aristocracy of immense power and privilege. For the masses, The Beati Paoli were heroes and defenders.
Onto the stage of the ancient city, amid its splendors, grand palazzi, labyrinthian dark alleys, and underground passages, steps Blasco da Castiglione, a bold and brash orphan adventurer, attempting to discover his origins and seek his destiny. In his quest, Blasco unwittingly becomes entangled in a succession plot involving one of Sicily’s most powerful families.
He encounters the villain Don Raimondo, the beautiful and passionate Donna Gabriella, the wicked Matteo Lo Vecchio, the sweet and naïve Violante, and the enigmatic Coriolano della Floresta. The characters are forever in the midst of the invisible yet constant presence of the Beati Paoli, whose members dress in black sackcloth, with faces concealed by masks and hoods, and who emerge from the subterranean caves of Palermo to lurk in the shadows and strike their victims at night. Centuries after their appearance, the origin of the sect is shrouded in mystery; although there is no documentary proof of its existence, in Sicily the Beati Paoli are the stuff of legend and romance. The sect has come to be seen in popular imagination as a proto-manifestation of the mafia. Indeed, some mafiosi have portrayed themselves as successors of the Beati Paoli, and the Cosa Nostra is said to trace its roots to the sect.
With meticulous attention to historic events and topographic details…
With meticulous attention to historic events and topographic details, Natoli paints a vibrant portrait of life in Palermo, the capital city, where nobles ride in stately gilded carriages during the day and the wretched emerge at night to scrounge for food and sleep on the steps and in the doorways of churches. His story plays out amid the tension between the aristocratic class and their ever-changing rulers, amid the struggles between Church and State, and against the island’s hopes for the rebirth of its kingdom, its return to wealth and glory, and its ultimate disillusionment with its new overlords.
Reminiscent of the adventure novels of Dumas, Sicilian Avengers is a tale of history and adventure, love and hatred, friendship and betrayal, suffering and retribution. For the inhabitants of the Capo, the Palermo neighborhood where it was believed the sect would meet, Natoli’s novel became almost a sacred text, read aloud every evening by the head of the family to relatives who listened to it in rapt silence. According to the historian Rosario La Duca: “In Sicily, The Beati Paoli is still the only book that most ordinary people ever read in the course of their life.” Upon its publication in France in 1990, French critic Jean Noël Schifano wrote in Le Monde: “After The Betrothed, The Viceroys, The Name of the Rose, and History: a Novel by Elsa Morante, here, finally, with the translation of The Beati Paoli is the fifth historical monument of contemporary Italian literature.”