The prose style of this book gets in it's way. Unfortunately Eric Olsen is correct. Though Sicily has a fascinating history, dramatic and exciting, it certainly does not come through in this poorly translated book. It's the fault of the translator that it fails. Justin Vitiello's command of English is not what it might be were he less pretentious in his choice of language and syntax. One imagines it reads better in the Italian of Quatriglio who should find himself a better translator. There is merit in the information, were it better presented.

Disappointing political history. While Sicily undoubtedly has a fascinating and rich history, it did not come through in this work. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the journalist author wrote in disjointed journalistic dispatches: whenever the material began to get interesting, the author dropped the topic and moved on to the next headline; furthermore, his narrow focus on political events (with a smattering of high culture) made the survey of "A Thousand Years in Sicily" rather superficial. The extraordinarily awful translation only compounded these problems.

This is a pleasant novel by Danilo Dolci, but the English in it is of awkward quality and doesn't do it justice. Like most things Vitiello touches, it sounds convoluted, dull and flat. Perhaps, he's a good scholar, but his own poetry in English is as dull, flat and convoluted as all of his translations. The other translator would do well to stay away from him as he gives her work a bad name. He simply doesn't understand English and its idioms well enough to do a good job of translation.

A reader from Paterson Community College

The problem for the reader of Vitiello's poetry, is that it is unreadable. He's taken a good subject and rendered it boring. Vanzetti's heartfelt dialectic English was more interesting than Vitiello's attempts to sound refined and poetic. I'll take Vanzetti's prose and poetry over Vitiello's any day. His poetry simply is not poetic and carries no energy or engagement. What a pity! An excellent Italian subject rendered into lumpy oatmeal with no spice, and the title is misleading as it seems to have little to do with Vanzetti--a fascinating character where Vitiello's concerns seem dull as dishwater.