The Beauty of the Earth

Fairy Tales from the Arbëreshë of Sicily

Collected by Giuseppe Schirò | Translated and illustrated by Albert Lulushi

Fifteen traditional Arbëreshë fairy tales from Sicily come to life in English through a new translation and seventy-three original illustrations.

Forthcoming October 15, 2026, in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

Overview

In the fairy-tale world of the Arbëreshë of Sicily, the marvelous requires little explanation. Serpents become handsome young men. Mysterious Ladies ride through the air on butterflies. Animals speak and give counsel. Fairies intervene in human affairs. Young men and women undertake impossible tasks and dangerous journeys, while prophecy, fate, faith, courage, cunning, and love shape their fortunes.

The Arbëreshë are Albanian-speaking communities established in southern Italy and Sicily beginning in the fifteenth century. Across generations, they have preserved a distinct cultural inheritance through language, religion, customs, songs, stories, and collective memory. In Sicily, one of the most important of these communities is Piana degli Albanesi, where the poet, scholar, and folklorist Giuseppe Schirò was born in 1865.

The Beauty of the Earth brings together fifteen of their traditional fairy tales selected from Giuseppe Schirò’s 1923 collection of material from the Albanian communities of Sicily.

Albert Lulushi’s new English translations draw on both forms in which the tales appear in Schirò’s collection: Arbërisht and Italian. Consulting the two texts together allows distinctions sometimes obscured in the Italian to reemerge in English, while preserving the repetitions, proverbs, verses, traditional formulas, humor, darkness, and unexpected turns that give the stories their distinctive character.

Their inhabitants will be familiar to anyone who loves the old European fairy-tale tradition: kings and princes, beautiful maidens, jealous sisters, cruel stepmothers, helpful old women, Fairies, enchanted animals, supernatural adversaries, and heroes confronted with impossible choices. Yet the way these elements come together belongs to the particular storytelling inheritance preserved among the Arbëreshë of Sicily.

The collection is extensively illustrated with seventy-three original pen-and-ink and watercolor works by Lulushi. Rather than reconstructing a particular historical community, the illustrations create a medieval-inflected fairy-tale world in which the supernatural is treated with the same visual seriousness as the ordinary.

Intended for adults and older children, The Beauty of the Earth presents these stories first as fairy tales to be read and enjoyed, while opening a window onto the remarkable cultural inheritance of a centuries-old Albanian-speaking community in Sicily.

“A little time passed, and much time passed…”

“A tremendous struggle!”

About the Source Collection

The fifteen tales were selected from Giuseppe Schirò’s 1923 collection Canti tradizionali ed altri saggi delle colonie albanesi di Sicilia (Traditional Songs and Other Essays on the Albanian Colonies of Sicily). The new edition presents the stories as translations of traditional tales, not as modernized adaptations or retellings. The translation draws on both Schirò’s Arbërisht texts and their Italian versions.

About the Imprint

Mesagjeritë Shqiptare is an imprint of Albanika Press dedicated to literary translation and cultural preservation.

Books published under the imprint bring historically significant Albanian and Arbëreshë voices, texts, and traditions to English-language readers through carefully developed editions attentive to language, context, and long-term accessibility.

Illustrations

Seventy-three original pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations accompany the fifteen tales. Fine drawing, controlled cross-hatching, restrained color, and tactile environments give visible form to the stories without presenting the imagined world as a historical reconstruction of Arbëreshë life.

Book Details

Title: The Beauty of the Earth

Subtitle: Fairy Tales from the Arbëreshë of Sicily

Collector: Giuseppe Schirò

Translator / Illustrator / Introduction: Albert Lulushi

Publisher: Albanika Press

Editorial program / imprint: Mesagjeritë Shqiptare

Audience: Adults and older children

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook

Trim size: 6 × 9 inches

Page count: 168

Interior: Premium color; 73 original illustrations

Language: English

Source languages: Arbërisht and Italian

Publication date: October 15, 2026

Edition: First Edition

Hardcover ISBN: 979-8-9945313-5-8

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9945313-6-5

Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9945313-7-2

U.S. list prices: Hardcover $39.99; Paperback $29.99; Ebook $9.99

Themes and Focus

This collection engages with:

• Traditional storytelling and oral narrative

• Fate, prophecy, courage, and cunning

• Family loyalty, betrayal, and reconciliation

• Fairies, enchanted animals, transformations, and supernatural trials

• The cultural inheritance of the Arbëreshë of Sicily

The stories are suitable for:

• Adult general readers of fairy tales, folklore, mythology, and world literature

• Older children comfortable with the danger, cruelty, darkness, and moral complexity of traditional fairy tales

• Public, academic, and cultural library collections

• Readers interested in Albanian and Arbëreshë culture, Sicily, translation, and illustrated literature

“One day an old woman passed by that way, one of those who know things, and she said that Fata, orphan and poor as she was, would one day marry the king’s son.”

“He had scarcely finished speaking these words when he saw, rising from the depths of the sea and drawing near him, as he waited upon the shore, a red fish, holding the precious ring in its mouth.”