Mattanza
Subtitle: love and death in the Sea of Sicily
By: Theresa Maggio.
Publisher: Perseus Pub.
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 263
Subjects: Maggio, Teri -- Travel -- Italy -- Favignana Island.; Fishing -- Italy -- Favignana Island.; Favignana Island (Italy) -- Description and travel.; Favignana Island (Italy) -- Social life and customs.
Description: "Theresa Maggio brings us inside the secretive world of the tonnara - the ritual trapping and killing of bluefin enacted by fishermen since the Stone Age.".

"In a single, bloody spectacle, called the mattanza, the men harvest the bluefin, lifting them by hand from a labyrinthine trap. Mattanza illuminates this rite of spring with prose that is both gritty and lyrical, and in the process unveils a way of life that might soon disappear. Maggio takes us from the net house, its jaw-like arches resembling a tuna's open maw, into the old cannery, where, during the war, hungry young boys used to suck the marrow from tuna bones.

We meet Clemente, the golden-haired fisherman, with whom Maggio has a brief love affair, and her friend Christina, who runs the Two Columns Bar, where the Favignanese still gather for a Campari in the late afternoon."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-263).