Mattanza 6-Copy Counter Display

Maggio delivers a magnificent journey inside the world of a Sicilian fishing community and its thousand-year-old rituals. Part memoir, part natural history, "Mattanza" is a riveting narrative of one woman's journey into another world. 30 photos.

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In 1986, love drew Theresa Maggio to Favignana, an island just off the coast of Sicily. There the young journalist encountered the mysterious world of the tonnara-the ritual trapping and killing of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea-and the mattanza, the stunning, bloody climax of the fishing season when the huge fish are wrestled from the sea and killed. Mattanza is the riveting story of Maggio's annual return to witness this timeless struggle between man and the sea. An alluring blend of memoir, history, and travelogue, Mattanza documents an insular and exotic world where the tonnara continues according to ancient ritual even as modern fishing methods edge it towards extinction.