Roberto Federico De

*I Viceré* is a nineteenth-century version of the television series *Brothers & Sisters*. The Uzedas are an ancient noble family from Catania, counting even a saint among their ancestors. > The old Spanish stock, mingled over the centuries with island elements—half Greek, half Saracen—had gradually lost its purity and bodily nobility: who, for instance, could have distinguished Don Blasco from a coarse friar spawned by serfs, or Donna Ferdinanda from an old weaver woman? As in the famous television series, the members of this vast family bicker, trade insults, and scheme, yet they always live together, ever returning to the grand princely house. The year is 1850, in the wake of the Sicilian revolution of 1848–1849, which ended in bloodshed. The princess mother, a greedy and wicked woman, dies leaving two heirs: the eldest son, who assumes the title of prince, and the favored son, the young count Raimondo. The prince immediately sets to work seizing the entire inheritance through intrigue and subterfuge. Meanwhile, history marches on, and the “new Italy” allows the family—thoroughly Bourbon and reactionary though it is—to profit from public offices, now elective, and from the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. A conflict inevitably arises between the prince and his son Consalvo, whose transgression is hurting the prince in the “strongest feeling of all,” “his purse.” Yet Consalvo is an Uzeda, too. If > the prince had fought all his life to amass as much money into his own hands as possible, wresting it from his mother, his brothers, his sisters, his wife , Consalvo thought only > of his own individual interest; to satisfy his vanity he was willing to turn anything to his advantage . Ultimately, both were representatives > of those greedy Spaniards solely bent on enriching themselves, incapable of understanding any power, value, or virtue greater than that of money . And this is perhaps the true conclusion of the novel. When Consalvo becomes a member of parliament by posing as a democrat and visits Aunt Ferdinanda, who exclaims in anger: “Disgraceful times... Degenerate race!”, the new prince, and member of the Parliament of the Kingdom, replies with a truth that is profoundly pessimistic, yet often true: > history is a monotonous repetition; men have been, are, and will always be the same. No, our race has not degenerated: it is always the same . *I Viceré* is a choral novel. The individual protagonists are stereotypes of a social role to which they are condemned. The reader fails to become invested in the characters or the events, which are themselves repetitive and often predictable. The novel, like all great nineteenth-century books, flows slowly, devoid of leaps or rapids, like a mighty river. It is easy to read, yet also monotonous. Why read it? Because it is a good read under a beach umbrella.