19th century French literature is notable for the effects of the contemporary fashion for orientalism. This fashion was greatly encouraged by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, which inspired many scholars and artists to make as complete a record as they could of the natural and cultural features of that country, both in pictorial and verbal form. A large number of authors were fascinated by the exoticism of the Orient. Their literary treatment of the subject frequently spawned an engagement with contemporaneous erosive tendencies in their own culture.

Between 1981, when the 60-year-old author won the prestigious Premio Campiello with his first novel ADiceria dell'untoreA, and his death in 1996, Bufalino published novels, short stories, plays, poems, aphorisms, essays, anthologies, and various works on his native Sicily. The appeal and success of this motley list of works stems from the specific situation Bufalino found himself in, oscillating in his life and in his works between a congenital collective Sicilian identity and a personal identity of European dimensions gained by voracious reading, and constantly reflecting both these poles in his writing.