The early Greek inhabitants of Sicily peered into Etna’s crater and declared the volcano to be full of monsters. Its ‘impenetrable darkness’ reminded Coleridge of his opium addiction. Helena Attlee, whose hugely enjoyable The Land where Lemons Grow (2014) won acclaim, brings to her portrait of Etna a softer, more admiring, yet respectful, eye. Unpicking its geological and human history and a landscape ‘cobbled together from the expressions of the Earth’s unrest’ became for her a way of returning to the very beginnings of life.

Mount Etna, almost 3,500 metres in height, is Europe’s biggest volcano and one of the most active in the world, grumbling and spewing for many months at a time. Even when quiet, ash settles everywhere, not soft and grey but black and gritty, the razor-sharp fragments making their way into clothes and shoes. A million people live on its slopes, where the extreme fertility of its soil has fostered rich and abundantly flavoured crops of every kind. Mangoes, papaya and avocados thrive in the damp, semi-tropical warmth of its east side. Orchards and vineyards cluster around its base. Towards the top stand pines, some........

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