I returned to my family home in Liguria this year to celebrate Easter – a day that most Italians consider synonymous with gathering. As dozens of relatives sat around a table laden with colorful vegetables and grilled meats, a scene from a book came to mind and stuck with me. Unfold like this. It’s Easter in a small town in southern Italy. Grandmothers wake up at dawn, pull jar after jar of preserved tomatoes from the pantry, gather vegetables from the refrigerator and herbs from the garden, and carefully prepare all the ingredients for the feast to come. They work all morning, barely pausing to catch their breath, and by the end of prayer, the large wooden table is creaking under the weight of enough dishes to feed a small village. The family sits down at one o’clock in the afternoon and does not wake up before five o’clock, and heads to the living room to lie on the sofas, drink hot coffee and eat sweets. In the evening, dinner time would come, and this beautiful torture would be repeated again. The scene – titled “The White Sea Six” – is taken from a book that is part of…
