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The Florios of Sicily

Overview

Stefania Auci’s The Florios of Sicily (Italian: I leoni di Sicilia, or “The Lions of Sicily”) is a historical novel first published in Italy in 2019. Centered on the real Florio family, it transforms a documented family history into a fictionalized saga set amid the social and political changes of nineteenth-century Sicily and southern Italy. Its characters and narrative are shaped by invention, while drawing on real people and historical events. The result is both a multigenerational family story and a portrait of a society in transition.

The novel opens in 1799, after an earthquake devastates Bagnara in Calabria. Paolo Florio has lost his parents and other relatives, and decides to leave his precarious life behind. He travels to Palermo, Sicily, with his wife, Giuseppina, his brother, Ignazio, and his infant son, Vincenzo. The city offers possibility, but little comfort: the newcomers are poor outsiders in a crowded, expensive place, and Giuseppina resents leaving the country home she knew. Paolo and Ignazio work long hours in a small spice shop, building a livelihood through trade.

After Paolo’s early death, Ignazio and Vincenzo carry the enterprise forward. Vincenzo grows into an ambitious and forceful businessman, and the family expands beyond spices into ventures including tuna processing, shipping, insurance, and banking. As the Florios acquire wealth and influence, they encounter commercial competition, social prejudice, and the demands of family loyalty and succession. The story follows their ascent across several decades, reaching the 1860s and placing the family’s changing fortunes against the wider history of Sicily and Italian unification.

Themes and historical setting

Migration is central to the book: the Florios leave Calabria to remake their lives in Sicily, yet their success does not immediately erase their outsider status. The novel treats upward mobility as a difficult process rather than an uncomplicated triumph, shaped by work, risk, ambition, and social barriers. Family is both the foundation of the enterprise and a source of obligation and conflict. Marriage, sibling ties, parenthood, and inheritance connect private life to the long effort of building a lasting business.

Auci also uses the family’s commercial evolution to explore changing economic and social orders. The movement from a modest spice shop into larger industries gives the family’s rise a tangible, everyday dimension, while political change forms the larger frame. By linking a local family history to the upheavals of nineteenth-century Sicily and the unification of Italy, the novel shows how personal choices and business fortunes are shaped by forces beyond the household. Its blend of family saga, commercial history, and historical fiction makes the Florios’ rise a way of examining both individual ambition and collective change.

Reception and standing

The novel became a major Italian bestseller and reached readers internationally. HarperCollins reports sales of more than 1.5 million copies in Italy and publication in over forty countries. It also provided the basis for The Lions of Sicily, a screen series available on Disney+ and Hulu. That reach has helped introduce the Florio family’s story beyond Italy and established Auci as a prominent contemporary writer of historical fiction. The book’s lasting appeal lies in its combination of a compelling rise-to-prominence narrative with a grounded sense of place and historical change: it makes the fortunes of one family illuminate the transformations of an entire region.

About the Author

Stefania Auci

Life and education

Stefania Auci is an Italian writer born on 21 November 1974 in Trapani, Sicily. She attended a classical secondary school and studied law at the University of Palermo, graduating with a law degree. Before establishing herself as a novelist, she worked as a court clerk at the Florence courthouse. She later returned to Palermo, where she works as a special-needs teacher. Her path through education, legal work, and teaching has taken place alongside a close connection to Sicily, the region that provides the setting for her best-known fiction.

Auci wrote short stories before turning to novels. Her first novel, Florence, appeared in 2015. Her breakthrough came with The Florios of Sicily, published in Italian in 2019. Accounts of the book’s publication note that two publishers had rejected it before it became a surprise bestseller. That reversal marked a decisive moment in her career: a historical family saga that had initially struggled to find a publisher went on to reach a large Italian and international readership. Auci’s work as a teacher and her earlier experience in law and the courts form important parts of her professional background, although her public reputation rests chiefly on her historical fiction.

Major works and development

Auci’s major novels include Florence (2015) and The Florios of Sicily (2019). The latter is based on the real Florio family and follows its rise from modest beginnings in Calabria to commercial prominence in Palermo. Its narrative moves from a small spice shop into enterprises such as tuna processing, shipping, insurance, and banking, while tracing family relationships against the changing history of Sicily and the unification of Italy. The book established the historical family saga as the central work associated with her career.

Auci continued the Florio story in works known in English as The Triumph of the Lions and The Fall of the Florios. A 2026 account also describes her new novel, The Dawn of the Lions, as an expansion of the saga. Together these works show her sustained interest in the family’s history and in the possibilities of historical fiction. Rather than presenting history as a bare sequence of political events, she places social change within the experiences of people negotiating ambition, work, kinship, and status.

Reputation

The international success of The Florios of Sicily made Auci a prominent contemporary Italian writer of historical fiction. HarperCollins reports that the novel sold more than 1.5 million copies in Italy and was published in over forty countries. It also became the basis for The Lions of Sicily, a screen series available on Disney+ and Hulu. The book’s circulation and adaptation carried the Florio family story to audiences beyond Italy and helped secure Auci’s reputation as a writer able to connect regional history with a broad readership. Available accounts describe her as continuing to write; she is living, and no death is reported in the material. Her enduring standing is closely associated with the Florio saga and with her ability to turn historical family material into an accessible narrative of social and economic transformation.

StoryFlow

From Bagnara to Palermo from "The Florios of Sicily". This flow follows the Florio family’s forced departure from Bagnara and their transformation from coastal traders into Palermo entrepreneurs.

From Bagnara to Palermo

This flow follows the Florio family’s forced departure from Bagnara and their transformation from coastal traders into Palermo entrepreneurs.

Building the Florio firm from "The Florios of Sicily". This flow traces the business from a struggling partnership to a diversified family enterprise with influence across Sicily and beyond.

Building the Florio firm

This flow traces the business from a struggling partnership to a diversified family enterprise with influence across Sicily and beyond.

The partnership that broke from "The Florios of Sicily". This flow follows the Florios’ collaboration with the Barbaros from kinship and shared trade to distrust, separation, and belated reconciliation.

The partnership that broke

This flow follows the Florios’ collaboration with the Barbaros from kinship and shared trade to distrust, separation, and belated reconciliation.