Conversations in Sicily
Elio Vittorini
 Silvestro Ferrauto is a Sicilian working as a typesetter in Milan, who beset by strange feelings of hopelessness, decides to visit Sicily after receiving a letter from his father which reveals that the father has abandoned Ferrauto's mother. Ferrauto has not visited Sicily since leaving at the age of 15 and ends up on the train to Sicily apparently without conscious thought. Ferrauto then has various conversations with a number of Sicilians on the way to, and in, Sicily. His return to Sicily and his new understanding of his mother from an adult point of view seems to calm his hopelessness. In a drunken state he seems to have a conversation with his dead brother, or at the age he was when he was alive. The novel closes with his father sobbing in the kitchen whilst the mother scrubs his feet.