An impossible love, a noble, voluptuous Sicily, and the music demon who possesses bodies. A passionate novel with the power of a classic.

Luigi is little more than a child when, possessing only a few rags and the gift of an extraordinary tenor voice, he arrives in Sicily to seek his fortune. At the docks, as the crowd pushes him onto the gangway of the ship, he sees the large black shape, emitting sounds. It’s a grand piano, and his instinct tells him to follow it.

Hidden between the legs of the instrument, he arrives in a wagon at Capo Scirocco, with its elegant buildings and its great baroque theater. After a night without shelter, he is famished and exhausted, and it is in this state that he encounters Rita Agnello, a rich widow and warm-hearted woman of strong character and rare beauty, who decides to welcome him into her home. Months go by and Luigi learns to live like a noble at the side of Donna Rita: He feels at ease in the salons of the city, and he delights in the warm wind that gives it its name and which they say drives women mad and wild. Even Rita seems different now, more lively and graceful.

One day however, Luigi discovers that the piano he caught sight of upon his arrival belongs to Anna, the young daughter of a citrus-fruit merchant. Every evening he listens to it from the street and dreams of singing, and feels himself growing up, becoming a man, almost. But when the sirocco blows, two women are too many for a young man to have on his mind.

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Emanuela E. Abbadessa was born in Catania, where she taught music history. She has worked in the press office of the Symphony Orchestra of Savona, where now she lives. She writes for the newspaper La Repubblica. With Scent of Sicily, her first novel, Ebbadessa won the Rapallo Carige Prize, reserved for women writers, at the Turin International Book Fair.