I have been lucky enough to read a few of the Haus Publishing Armchair Traveller books and one thing I’ve liked best is the imaginative ways they have been written, not often you’ll find out about somebody like Dickens using structured walks around London. This book has been the most intriguing and the reason it has been left to last, Luque is given a small red book filled with photos of a man he is obsessed with, the famous Luis Borges and the time he spent in Sicily, Luque decides to visit Sicily and try and recreate those photos and to see how much those places have changed.

Luque took this trip whilst quite young and very new to this type of writing, the epilogue is quite amusing as it has been written 10 years after the book was written and he does feel embarrassed by some of what he wrote. Personally I found his writing quite refreshing, you don’t get the usual dry writing about the places and its inhabitants, what you get is a young man obsessed with finding these locations at all cost…with three friends tagging along trying to keep his obsessions under control and begging him to stop with the many many quotes. There are a lot of humourous scenes, lying to the police, a bit of breaking and entering, wedding crashing and being woken up on a beach by a big scary dog.

I think this book started out as a way to find Borges but it is soon overtaken by Sicily itself, who would have thought such a small island could have so much history and have influenced so many movies…I do recommend watching the Godfather Trilogy, Cinema Paradiso and Malena before starting this book, not only are they very good movies but are heavily featured in this book, watching them will give you a good visual on the places mentioned.

A couple of disappointments in this book was the lack of information on Borges life, the focus of the book is those moments captured in the photos, I would have liked a bit more about his life and time in Sicily. A nice addition to the book that was missing was the re-created photos, I would have loved to have seen how accurately recreated they were.

I have really enjoyed this book and I feel like this has been a taster for Sicily and for Borges, both seem to be the sort of things one could become obsessed with.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/borges-in-sicily-journey-with-a-blind-guide-by-alejandro-luque/