Bagheria

InBagheria, Dacia Maraini revisits the landscape of early memory.She describes Sicily in sensuous detail, the town of Bagheria, and the ancestral villa to which she returned as a child after two horrific years of imprisonment with her family in a Japanese concentration camp.The Villa Valguarnera recalls Maraini's spiritual struggles and her rebellion against the elitism of her class. She also discusses her experience of child abuse.Bagheriais a tale of corruption: centuries of the town's past unfold alongside Maraini's family history as she details the involvement of the mafia in the architectural decimation of Bagheria in the 1970s.