A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy's Soul
by Caroline Moorehead London: Chatto & Windus, 2026 ISBN 9781784745042
I have read a few books by Sciascia, and have found his allusive and cryptic style very appealing. His fictional chronicling of the truths of a Sicily dominated by the Mafia led him to become in some senses the conscience of decent Italians, in opposition to the forces that led the country into financial, political and moral corruption.
In this easy to read and well-written book, Caroline Moorehead traces Sciascia's life, both public and private, along with the development, growth and exposure - via the activities of some brave people - of the Mafia in Sicily and beyond.
Sciascia was a man of Sicily and so not only understood the Mafia mindset, but shared in it. A quiet and observant child, Sciascia closely watched the world around him in Racalmuto: listening to the gossip of his aunts, observing how residents interacted with each other, and the glaring inequality that was exacerbated by the control the Mafia had over society.
Moorehead explains how Sciascia's left-wing views were formed by these early experiences, as well as through the anti-fascist views of his family, and witnessing at first hand the lives of the sulphur miners of his local area both as a teacher of their children and through his father's work as a mine accountant.
Sciascia's time as a teacher was hard for him. He tried but mostly failed to instil a love of literature and the Enlightenment into his pupils, many of whom were going hungry because their parents could not afford to feed and clothe their children. Sciascia had always had the desire to be a writer, and his first major foray into literature, The Day of the Owl, set the tone for his early career. A story where a "man alone" works against society and the State in the pursuit of justice, only to be thwarted.
Sciascia's stories exposed the rotten heart of the Italian State, where corruption ruled, and nothing positive was ever achieved for the people of the country. Sciascia spent some time in political office, both in Sicily and in Rome, and on both occasions his terms ended with him fearing that Italy in many respects was a failed state, with the apparatus of government only there to support those with their snouts in the trough, whether that was the politicians themselves, businessmen, or the all-pervasive Mafia.
Sciascia, through his fiction, came to be seen as an expert on the Mafia. He became a kind of Twentieth Century Italian Cassandra: all of his predictions came true, but no-one ever believed his prophecies. Moorehead tracks the public Sciascia's feuds and polemics, mostly run and delivered through newspaper articles - she does this well, with enough information to put them in context for the English language reader.
She does likewise with her tale of the Mafia through Sciascia's life. From the crackdown during the Fascist years, to the accommodation with the Americans during the War, also explaining how it managed to intertwine itself with the government and the Christian Democrats, Moorehead lays out how the Mafia did everything Sciascia said it would do, how it, rather than the government, police or judiciary became the "truth" in Sicily.
She tracks Sciascia's views of the progression of the Maxi-trial, which finished just before his death, and how the aftermath fulfilled the prophecies of a man who by the end of his life had become very pessimistic about whether Sicily could ever drag itself out of it's predicament. As he famously stated he could neither live in Sicily or outside of it.
About Sciascia's personal life, Moorehead does not say much - perhaps because there is not much to say. He was happily married with two daughters, and a wife who was his helpmate and to whom he was devoted. He was a great friend and a great enemy in that true Sicilian way - if he felt betrayed by any of his friends he cut them off completely. For someone who was famously taciturn he was much valued as a friend to spend time with, enjoying wandering through art galleries or antiquarian booksellers, or sitting around a table at a publishers or newspaper office. Many of his best friends were artists - he seemed to enjoy their company more than his fellow novelists.
The idea behind Moorehead's book is a clever one: a slightly different take on the Mafia to many, and a decent biography of one of the best Italian writers of the Twentieth Century. It didn't quite reach the heights for which I was hoping, but it is informative and interesting.
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