Leonardo Sciascia the Man and the Writer
by Joseph Farrell
Paperback (Published)
(August 2022)
ISBN: 9788822268211
4.72 x 6.85 inches
Price: $39.00
In stock
Restlessness of imagination and intellect in a writer can damage his standing with critics, but Sciascia’s insatiable curiosity, keen intellect, detestation of injustice wherever perpetrated have made him a writer who could not be restricted to any one genre. His reputation has been enhanced by his versatility, guaranteeing his place among the great writers of the twentieth century. He remains best known, especially outside Italy, as novelist and author of idiosyncratic detective stories which seek to discover not only ‘whodunnit’ but why the crime was committed, who profits by it, and what is the nature of collusion between low-level criminals and seemingly respectable figures in society. His novels, including To Each His Own and The Context, can be enjoyed as thrillers or crime stories, but they simultaneously probe questions of socio-political ethics. The investigation by his detectives is not primarily directed at individual guilt but at uncovering flaws in the very structure of society. He exposed mafia power in Sicily and Italy, and the mafia provided the lens or metaphor behind his sceptical view of all power. He once accused himself of not having great creative powers, and while this judgement is highly dubious, he did not always find fiction the most suitable vehicle for his enquiries. He devised a new genre which corresponds to no existing category but which can be conveniently described as the ‘essay-enquiry’. The very idea of enquiry is the central feature of his cast of mind and of his output as a whole, fiction or non-fiction. Essay-enquiries include Death of the Inquisitor, set in the age of the Counter-Reformation, The Stabbers, an account of a plot in Palermo in the mid nineteenth century after Garibaldi’s landing, and The Moro Case, an investigation into the kidnap and assassination of the politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1970s Italy. In addition, Sciascia was what would once have been known as a ‘man of letters’, author of many essays and articles on literature, history and politics, as well as an acerbic commentator on current affairs, essayist, belle-lettrist and occasional poet. He acknowledged his debt to Enlightenment thinkers and his insistence on reason as the basis of civilisation has contributed to his fame outside as well as inside Italy. His focal point was his native Sicily, but his work is the product of a refined, critical spirit which is both Sicilian and cosmopolitan, which is at home in different cultures and which acknowledges its debt to such varied authors as Pirandello, Stendhal, Kafka and Borges. His tenacious campaigning for truth and justice gives him renewed importance in an age of relativist scepticism. An early enthusiast, Gore Vidal, once wrote that “Sciascia has made out of his curious Sicilian experience a literature that is not quite like anything else done by a European”. He himself claimed that his Sicilian experience made him a pessimist, but his works give ground for hope. This new volume attempts to give due attention to the totality of his rich and varied output, to evaluate his achievement in the context of own time and also to assess his enduring legacy. It is hoped that it will extend the appeal of this important author to an English-speaking audience.
Joseph Farrell is Emeritus Professor of Italian at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. In 2005, he was given the title Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana for his work in promoting Italian culture abroad. The history and culture of Sicily have always fascinated him, and so he was inevitably drawn to the work of Leonardo Sciascia. He has published articles on Sciascia in learned journals and newspapers, and has given talks on his works in European and American universities. He is translator of The Knight and Death and A Straightforward Tale and is currently a member of the advisory board of “Todomodo”. His first book on Sciascia was published by Edinburgh University Press in 1995, and the desire to reconsider Sciascia’s work in the light of the many stimulating studies published in recent years has led to the present work. Farrell’s other works include: Sicily, A Cultural History; a biography of Dario Fo and Franca Rame; a study of Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa; and in 2021 Honour and the Sword, a study of the history and culture of duelling. He has produced two book-length interviews, the first with Franca Rame and the second with Dacia Maraini. Together with Paolo Puppa, he edited the History of Italian Theatre for Cambridge University Press. He has also edited volumes of essays on Carlo Goldoni, Dario Fo, Primo Levi, Carlo Levi, Ugo Betti and the mafia. He produced critical editions in English of plays by Fo, Pirandello and Goldoni, translated three film scripts by Giuseppe Tornatore, as well as novels by Sciascia, Consolo, Del Giudice and Valerio Varesi, and plays by Fo, Goldoni and De Filippo.
- By (author) Joseph Farrell
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