Women of Messina

"Readers familiar with Vittorini's work will find Women of Messina remarkably suggestive in both spirit and content of his memorable In Sicily (1937). Once more, the theme is the search for certainty in the face of massive apathy and hopelessness. Consciously evoking Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Vittorini recounts the attempts of a metaphorically "shipwrecked" group of men and women -- most, like him, natives of Sicily -- to construct a new life on the site of a devastated village in postwar Italy." (back cover)