An oddly modern fairy tale for Jack Zipes.

The title, An Oddly Modern Fairy Tale, is a reference to the series edited by Jack Zipes for Princeton University Press, which includes retellings, translations and rediscoveries of fairy tales. To these various forms of engagement with tales of wonder, the author of this article has added what she describes as an 'anti-fairy tale' of three wealthy Sicilian siblings who recused themselves in differing ways from the twentieth century. The youngest, Lucio, was a lyric poet whose work was admired by both Lampedusa and Montale. His older brother, Casimiro, was a photographer and painter of unsettling watercolours of pop-eyed gnomes and sprites. These he claimed to have witnessed going about their otherworldly lives among the exotic plants that their sister, Agata Giovanna, bought for the extensive gardens whose borders she rarely left. The story ends with Lucio's attempt - both farcical and tragic - to secure a future for the family through the birth of an heir, which resembles similar attempts by Tancredi in Lampedusa's masterpiece The Leopard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]