In his book, The Mediterranean Incarnate, anthropologist Naor Ben-Yehoyada is deeply engaged in the discussion of the Mediterranean as a transnational space, in modern and contemporary times. He approaches the topic through the analysis of a case study: the relationship between Mazara del Vallo, a town in the western part of Sicily, and Tunisia. The town of Mazara del Vallo is a very interesting choice not only because 90 per cent of its immigrants are from Tunisia but also because it is considered to be a bridge over the Mediterranean Sea, as it is located only 140 km away (about 87 miles) from Tunisia. Ben-Yehoyada uses an anthropological and ethnographic approach (informed also by history) that includes a 37-day experience as a deckhand on the motor trawler Naumachos, where Sicilians work alongside Tunisians. This enabled him to carry out interviews and a thorough analysis of the relationship of the Sicilian and Tunisian fishermen, both while on land and at sea.

The book presents an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion, organised according to the chronology of the author's experience – before joining the trawler Naumachos as a crew member, during this experience and then on his return to Mazara. However, his book is much more than simply his experience and the life of the fishermen he encountered. The book recounts the relationship between these two Mediterranean peoples that has been shaped through an imaginary related to the two shores of this central Mediterranean area. Despite the remarkable bonds between the Sicilians and their Tunisian counterparts, whom they consider brothers, having worked together for decades, the jokes between them while on the trawler are heavy-handed: on one side, the Sicilians claim that Tunisia is an underdeveloped country, lacking very basic things such as mozzarella cheese, bananas and television; on the other, the Tunisians react by boasting ‘of exploits with women on Italian soil’ (p. 178). Even though there is no postcolonial relationship between Sicily and Tunisia, the two attitudes reveal a tension not in a national but in a transnational frame, within which Sicily represents the European colonial power and Tunisia the colonised party. While Ben-Yehoyada overlooks this link to the postcolonial in a transnational perspective (because of the period of reference as well as the history of Italian migration into Tunisia), he does note that this exchange reproduces the concept of honour in the Mediterranean as analysed by Jane Schneider.

More specifically, Ben-Yehoyada follows David Abulafia's historical approach, which looks at the Mediterranean not as an area to seek similarity but rather a diversity in which identities are processed in the same way. So while the Sicilians and the Tunisians refer to the historical past that unites them, they refer to two different centuries and then to two different positions; ‘[T]he Tunisian side mentioned Arab Sicily of the ninth century, and the Sicilian side replied by recalling Arab-Norman Sicily of the eleventh century’ (p. 222). Their allusion, due to their own national ideologies, to two different centuries, gives a ‘transnational community of disagreement’ (p. 223).

With this transnational approach, the author's main goal is to offer a methodology of region formation to be included in the Mediterraneanist discussion. Ben-Yehoyada looks at the transnational as a phenomenon that is not important just because it is in opposition to nationalism, as Katherine Verdery theorised, or because it links two different nations, as Nina Glick Schiller stated. The author focuses, instead, on how the transnational process may be influenced, and he argues that maritime regions like Mazara are constellations and, as such, must be studied separately. It is indicative that Ben-Yehoyada does not focus simply on the town of Mazara del Vallo but also on the experience on the trawler, the presence of the island of Lampedusa, the reference to Tunisia and the stories related to it, and the construction of the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline, to concretely show the constellations to which he refers. The author then proposes an analysis that is not thematic but pursued by ‘scaling devices’: ‘labor and class’, ‘patronage’, ‘family and kinship’, ‘honor’, and ‘cosmopolitanism’.

This book is an important read, suggested not only to those who are interested in fishing as an expression of the contemporary seafarer but also to all those interested in the Mediterranean as a transnational area where belonging is expressed by the use of imaginaries, historical processes, and contemporary projects. The Mediterranean Incarnate offers an original and excellent way to revisit the complexity of the Mediterranean.