Talking Location With …. Jim Loughran: SICILY

2nd October 2026

#TalkingLocationWith …. Jim Loughran: Sicily

The inspiration for novel Syracuse Will Burn

Sicily first came onto my radar thirty years ago when a friend gave me a Christmas present of two books by John Julius Norwich: the Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun. Norwich is worth reading not only for the history but because he writes the most beautiful English. The discovery of the richness and sophistication of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which became a haven for both Arabs and Jews, was a revelation. Here was a King who spoke Norman French and Latin, as well as Greek and Arabic. This openness and tolerance turned Sicily into one of the most cultured, and wealthy, kingdoms in Europe. It is ironic that today, the most spectacular Byzantine mosaics are to be seen in Palermo, Cefalu, and Monreale rather than Istanbul. That first trip prompted an enduring fascination with those cities which fuse the best of east and west: Venice, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Granada and Ravenna. The seed was sown. It was only over subsequent trips that I started to unravel the cultural archaeology of Sicily from the ancient Greeks to the Arabs and the Normans, before we even get to the later rulers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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Beach Mondello

In the summer of 2021, my husband and I were on holiday in Syracuse. Having left behind the baroque magnificence of Palermo we were now in a city that was undeniably Greek. I remember vividly crossing the bridge onto the island of Ortigia and standing beside the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. White stone against a blue sea and a sense of having stepped into the past. It is difficult to describe the feeling of standing in the cathedral and realizing that the pillars holding up the roof are the original pillars of the Temple of Athena. This is a space which has been a place of worship by pagans, Muslims and Christians for more than two thousand years.

Cathedral, Palermo

We sat down for a drink on the walls from which Archimedes launched a devasting attack on the ships of Rome, with a giant claw capable of hauling a ship up out of the water and then smashing it down. That sense of time and place became very useful as I was doing an online writing course. After a day spent climbing the hills around the Greek Amphitheatre and the Archaeological Park, I went back to the apartment to log on for my class. At the end of the class I was given a writing assignment based on the prompt: he turned a corner and went up a hill. After a moment of panic, I decided to set the story in Syracuse, and it seemed logical to build it around the most dramatic incident in the history of Syracuse – the attack by the Athenian fleet in 413BC. That exercise became a short story which won a prize and, in due course, became the basis for Syracuse Will Burn. I credit Apollo with being the inspiration for the novel.

As the novel began to take shape there was a need for more detail and last year we went back again. Though staying in Palermo, with occasional outings to the gorgeous beach at Mondelo, we picked up the archaeological trail with a trip to the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento. Agrigento, formerly known as Acragas, was obliterated by the Carthaginian armies of Himilco in 405 BC. The Temple of Concorde, one of twenty-one temples in the valley, stands on a promontory looking out over the sea and it is easy to imagine the inhabitants of the ancient city watching in terror as the Carthaginian ships sailed into the bay and their soldiers set up camp on the beach below. As one character says to my hero Timon: ‘they would have done better to reinforce their walls; rather than trusting to the protection of the gods.’

One critic has said of Syracuse will Burn ‘This wonderful novel made me ache to visit Syracuse just as Antony and Cleopatra took me to Egypt and Julius Caesar took me to Rome. Why? Because one of the most important characters in Syracuse Will Burn is Syracuse itself. The approach of the invading Carthaginians, ready to pillage, slaughter, enslave and burn, becomes even more gripping because we have been made to care for the city itself as well as the men and women who live there.’ Sicily is a rich and wonderful place and when you walk along the streets of Ortigia you are following in the footsteps of heroes. Go there.

Jim Loughran

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