Mattanza

the long version

"Theresa Maggio brings us inside the secretive world of the tonnara - the ritual trapping and killing of bluefin enacted by fishermen since the Stone Age.". "In a single, bloody spectacle, called the mattanza, the men harvest the bluefin, lifting them by hand from a labyrinthine trap. Mattanza illuminates this rite of spring with prose that is both gritty and lyrical, and in the process unveils a way of life that might soon disappear. Maggio takes us from the net house, its jaw-like arches resembling a tuna's open maw, into the old cannery, where, during the war, hungry young boys used to suck the marrow from tuna bones. We meet Clemente, the golden-haired fisherman, with whom Maggio has a brief love affair, and her friend Christina, who runs the Two Columns Bar, where the Favignanese still gather for a Campari in the late afternoon."--BOOK JACKET.