Synopsis

Donnafugata is a place, a stone's throw from Ragusa, among centuries-old carob trees, dry stone walls, and steep countryside. Donnafugata is a time, the 19th century, between Bourbon rule, uprisings of popular pride, and the dawn of workers' dignity. Donnafugata is a family, among the oldest in Ibla, which embodies the joys, sufferings, and future of that land and those days. At its head is Baron Corrado Arezzo De Spucches, whose book is almost a private diary: from when, with grazed knees and his wet nurse Annetta in tow, he ran away as a child from Don Gaudenzio and that camurria of his rosary; to the years when, as a boy, he studied in Palermo and there developed the desire for revolution; to those in which, as a husband, father, and then grandfather, he lived and grew old "surrounded by women," loving them all tenderly and surviving them with a broken heart.