D. H. Lawrence began the period of voluntary exile after WWI that he referred to as his ‘savage pilgrimage’, a journey that took him to Sicily between 1920 and 1922. In ‘Sun’, a short story set in his sexually charged version of the Sicilian landscape, he returns again and again to images of citrus trees and their fruit, making Juliet, the angry and frustrated American heroine, meander naked through a ‘dark underworld of lemons’, discovering freedom and sensuality for the first time in her life.

 

Attlee, Helena (2015-01-05). The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit (Kindle Locations 56-59). Countryman Press. Kindle Edition.