By Lluixhi Boccia/
Five centuries ago, communities fleeing the Ottoman advance in Albania and in the Morea settled in the mountains of southern Italy. Their descendants are still there, in some fifty towns from the Pollino to Sicily, and in many of them arbërisht is still spoken — a form of Albanian that broke away from the mainland before the Ottomans and survived on its own.
This book tells that story from the inside. The migrations and the pact with Naples; the Greek-Byzantine rite, which held the communities together when the language alone could not; the traditional costume, read as a document rather than as folklore; the songs, the loom, the kitchen; the emigration that carried these towns to New Orleans, New York, Sacramento and Buenos Aires; and, at the end, the figures for what is left, town by town.
It is written for the general reader, and it rests on documents throughout.
Photo: https://albconnection.com