The Piccinino by George Sand (1847)

This is Sand's Sicilian romance, and is classically her, with a rich landscape, young love, a political/philosophical battle, a mystery and the threat of violence. Its overwhelming colours are black and green, and its landscape a tortuous one. The black is the lava, spewed up from Aetna, which underlays the landscape in the area around Catania where the main action is set. The green is all of the intense bright verdure which grows on this super-fertile mix. The landscape is tortuous because of the gullies and peaks all around, through which the characters climb and slip, into which their houses and palaces are built, accessible often by staircases in the rock and staring down chasms. It's a steamy feeling. The main man, Michel (that's short for Michelangelo, so Mee-kell, rather than the Mee-shell) Lavoratori, is taken with a local princess on his return to Sicily from Rome where he has been trying his way into art. She seems strangely connected to his mason-decorator father. Meanwhile the rumoured brigand of the hills, the Piccinino, campaigning furtively against Sicily's Neapolitan rulers of the time, also taken with the princess, slips in and out of a political intrigue surrounding the coming death of Sicily's invalid ruler, the princess' uncle. Michel discovers at a crucial point that all in his life is not what it has hitherto seemed, and the scene is set for he, the princess (the revealer of the mystery) and the Piccinino to play their important parts in the struggle for possible Sicilian freedom. Those who want tough concision, rather than expansive largesse, might find it frustrating. But as a typical example of Sandian high romance, this is full of rich colours and highly entertaining.