Written over a nine-year period, the novel was finished in 1976 but was rejected by Italian publishers because of its length (of 540 pages) and its portrayal of a woman unrestrained by conventional morality and traditional feminine roles.

It details a woman's pursuit of cultural, financial and sexual independence in early-20th-century Sicily, during which she sleeps with both men and women, commits incest and murders a nun.

Modesta, the main character, lives with her mother and her disabled sister in impoverished conditions in rural Sicily.

She is then molested by a man who claims to be her biological father in the midst of a fire that kills her mother and sister.

She develops a lesbian relationship begins with Beatrice, who is Leonora's daughter and granddaughter of the elderly princess who heads the family, Gaia.

Having only previously experienced lesbian relationships, Modesta is exposed to heterosexual experiences with Carmine who manages the property of Gaia.

Modesta begins to understand the burden of being the female head of the family, forced to do business and without time for herself or Beatrice.

The shy doctor Carlo falls in love with Modesta but fails to grasp the immensity of her desire.

Modesta, now a point of reference for left-wing intellectuals of the time, gives refuge to Joyce, a wealthy psychologist who escapes fascism.

During the years of Mussolini's rule Casa di Modesta is a happy island in an increasingly black Italy.

Waking up at home, Modesta hears all the stories of her family from Bambolina, who in the meantime got married and had a child with Mattia, Stella (the help) has died giving birth to Prando's son, Carluzzu.

'Ntoni returns psychologically damaged by his wartime experiences and decides to get professional treatment in the North of Italy to heal.

[2] Her husband Angelo Pellegrino had it published posthumously at his own expense in 1998 and in a limited number of copies (about a thousand), again by Stampa Alternativa.

In 2001 the director of Rai Tre Loredana Rotondo dedicated an episode of the program Vuoti di memoria to the writer, entitled Goliarda Sapienza, the art of a lifetime, arousing a certain interest in the novel such as to allow it to be reprinted by the publisher Stampa Alternativa.

Following her death her husband Angelo Pellegrino financed in 1998 the publishing of a full edition by Stampa Alternativa of 1,000 copies of L'arte della gioia.

[4] Believing it to be a forgotten masterpiece he arranged for it to be published in Germany in two parts, In den Himmel stürzen (2005) and Die Signora (2006.

[5] Hamy passed it on translator Nathalie Castagné who after reading on the first few pages decided that it needed to be published in French.

[6] In 2013 Anne Milano Appel translated the novel into English and it was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux with the title The Art of Joy.

Emily Cooke writing for The New Yorker called the novel "too long, often awkward, sometimes tedious" and yet praised the "book’s crudeness [as] exactly its strength".