15th July 2014
In splendid tabloid style, the Sunday Mirror announced this week’s publication of Francesco Scannella’s memoir, Sicilian Shadows, with a double page feature. Read the article online, complete with enticing tabloid headline …
Secret Sicilian Mafia childhood of middle-aged, middle-class, tea-drinking illustrator from Surrey
A fun-loving 53-year-old dad, he loves his football. Drinks endless cups of tea. Likes browsing through old comics. Dotes on his wife and three lovely children.
But now and then, Frank gets flashbacks to a bloodcurdling Mafia childhood far removed from his quiet English life in leafy Surrey.
And the dark memories run deep – like the moment when as a wide-eyed boy of seven he was handed a smoking sawn-off shotgun in a Sicilian town square by an escaping hit man…
Read the full article here
Sicilian Shadows is the compelling memoir of a young boy’s struggle for survival in the heartland of the Mafia. It is a story of tragic young love and centuries-old hatreds told with wry humour and brutal honesty. No-one from that region with the author’s connections or perspective has ever written about what it was really like: names, times and places have been changed (to protect the innocent and, in many cases, the guilty), but these events and experiences really happened.
228 x 152 mm portrait
Publication: 17 July 2014