Tonio Giaccone and Turri Sicorene were professor and student at the local university many years ago. Now Tonio is dying, and the middle-aged friends reunite to reflect on their lives. As young men they were hopeful, ambitious, and foolish. Their families claimed real or imagined pedigrees while clinging to old superstitions involving the resident oracle. Though adulation of nobility was taken for granted among the common folk, the nobles acted just like everybody else, chasing their own tails, oblivious to the bigger picture.
Tonio and Turri chide each other for being so brilliant that nothing momentous has happened to either of them. Despite a lackluster performance in their personal and public lives, however, the friends have gained an important insight: Quotidian concerns cloud our perspective. In the broad scheme of things we are but grains of sand, infinitesimally small.
Set in Sicily in the late 1950s, Passing the Torch explores life, human naivete, and man's true place in the universe.
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