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A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul
'As much a history of the deeply crooked culture of Italian politics as it is a vivid biography of one man'
SUNDAY TIMES
'Fascinating' SPECTATOR
'Vivid and disturbing but utterly compelling' DAILY MAIL
Corruption, sleaze and violence were woven into the fabric of twentieth-century Sicilian life, as the Mafia rose to dominance. This is the story of one man who stood in opposition.
In 1986, the largest Mafia trial in Italy’s history took place in 471 men and 4 women took the stand, accused of horrific crimes. Sitting in the gallery was Leonardo Sciascia. One of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century, he had published the first Mafia novel, The Day of the Owl, in 1961, and was widely seen by Italians as a true moral figure in a country where corruption had seeped into every corner of public and private life.
Sciascia had come of age as the Mafia grew to prominence across Sicily. Witnessing the scale of corruption and violence, Sciascia predicted it would soon spread north, and he was by the 1980s, the Mafia had infiltrated every level of Italian politics and grown into an international, highly successful business.
In A Sicilian Man, prize-winning historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead charts Sciascia’s life against the rise of the Mafia, and lays out the thrilling and devastating struggle that ensued for Italy’s soul.
'Magnificent and deeply affecting' PHILIP HENSHER
'Vivid and knowledgeable... This feels like the book [Moorehead] was destined to write' LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT
'Fascinating' SPECTATOR
'Vivid and disturbing but utterly compelling' DAILY MAIL
Corruption, sleaze and violence were woven into the fabric of twentieth-century Sicilian life, as the Mafia rose to dominance. This is the story of one man who stood in opposition.
In 1986, the largest Mafia trial in Italy’s history took place in 471 men and 4 women took the stand, accused of horrific crimes. Sitting in the gallery was Leonardo Sciascia. One of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century, he had published the first Mafia novel, The Day of the Owl, in 1961, and was widely seen by Italians as a true moral figure in a country where corruption had seeped into every corner of public and private life.
Sciascia had come of age as the Mafia grew to prominence across Sicily. Witnessing the scale of corruption and violence, Sciascia predicted it would soon spread north, and he was by the 1980s, the Mafia had infiltrated every level of Italian politics and grown into an international, highly successful business.
In A Sicilian Man, prize-winning historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead charts Sciascia’s life against the rise of the Mafia, and lays out the thrilling and devastating struggle that ensued for Italy’s soul.
'Magnificent and deeply affecting' PHILIP HENSHER
'Vivid and knowledgeable... This feels like the book [Moorehead] was destined to write' LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 5, 2026
About the author
Caroline Moorehead
43 books268 followersCaroline Moorehead is the New York Times bestselling author of Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France; A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France; and Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An acclaimed biographer, Moorehead has also written for the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, the Times, and the Independent. She lives in London and Italy.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 24, 2026
This well-crafted book is a biography of Leonardo Sciacca, a prolific author and one of Italy's best. Scaccia was a proud Sicilian. The book follows Sciacca’s personal and professional life from his formative years in Sicily, where he watched, listened and absorbed everything and everyone around him. A few years as a teacher of poor children deepened his understanding of the villagers' mindset. Early in life, he longed to be an author. “The Day of the Owl” was his first major published work. This set the cryptic tone for his future work. His work primarily concerned the Mafia in Sicily and beyond. Scaccia successfully exposed the violent activities of the Mafia and widespread corruption. I learned a lot from this easy read. I commend it to you.
May 5, 2026
I love Leonardo Sciascia’s books, and I also loved Caroline Moorhead’s Village of Secrets, so this was a must-read and it didn’t disappoint. Moorhead does a superb job, tracing Sciascia’s life and work against the background of Sicilian history and the history of the Mafia in particular. Though she celebrates Sciascia’s literary achievements and the many things he got right as a ‘public intellectual’ and an observer of Sicilian/Italian politics and society, she does not gloss over his mistakes. She goes into some detail about his wrongheaded criticisms of the murdered anti-Mafia judges Falcone and Borsellino which soured his last years. Moorhead had a lot of access to his family while researching this book, and she draws touching and compelling pictures of Sciascia’s childhood in the village of Racalmuto, growing up with his ‘Sicilian aunts’, his friendships and literary/political quarrels, and his evolution into the great critic of Mafia power.
All in all a marvellous portrait of an enigmatic and fearless writer who ‘spent his entire life learning. He felt he had been put on earth to question, to dig, to appraise, to challenge, to seek the truth wherever it led him, using literature and history as his interpreters, accepting that he would never know the full answer to anything.’
It makes you want to re-read all Sciascia’s work, and it also reminds you that there was no one else like him.
All in all a marvellous portrait of an enigmatic and fearless writer who ‘spent his entire life learning. He felt he had been put on earth to question, to dig, to appraise, to challenge, to seek the truth wherever it led him, using literature and history as his interpreters, accepting that he would never know the full answer to anything.’
It makes you want to re-read all Sciascia’s work, and it also reminds you that there was no one else like him.
April 9, 2026
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.
Check out my other reviews at https://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com/
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.
Check out my other reviews at https://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com/
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March 27, 2026A Sicilian Man by Caroline Moorehead is as much about the history of Sicily during Leonardo Sciascia’s lifetime as it is about the life of Leonardo Sciascia: A Sicilian Man. Of course the history of Sicily deals with the mafia, and also “mainland” Italian history: Mussolini to Andreotti. Throughout these tumultuous times Sciascia was writing – with precision and irony – yet, as the foremost writer on the Italian mafia, he led a comparatively low-key life.
For a Sicilian, a happy childhood who became his village - Racalmuto – schoolteacher before his extraordinary writing ability led to him becoming a successful novelist. He also wrote for magazines and petitions, served as a magazine editor with brief positions in local government. At times he lived in Palermo and Rome but preferred to live in Racalmuto.
Why was he never a target for the mafia? Did the mafia not read or understand his writing? Was the mafia afraid of repercussions?
The best quotes from Sciascia: “If you want to be a writer, you need to grow up in a house full of women”, he would rather “lose readers than fool them”, “(a writer) transforms reality into fiction.” He quotes a Sicilian proverb: “the best word is the one that is not spoken.” Goethe has the final say: “To see Italy without Sicily, is not to have seen Italy at all.”
I like it when I discover a famous writer has a favourite writer that is a favourite writer of mine. The same thing that has appealed to me has appealed to a famous writer. In the case of myself and Sciascia: Montaigne.
For a Sicilian, a happy childhood who became his village - Racalmuto – schoolteacher before his extraordinary writing ability led to him becoming a successful novelist. He also wrote for magazines and petitions, served as a magazine editor with brief positions in local government. At times he lived in Palermo and Rome but preferred to live in Racalmuto.
Why was he never a target for the mafia? Did the mafia not read or understand his writing? Was the mafia afraid of repercussions?
The best quotes from Sciascia: “If you want to be a writer, you need to grow up in a house full of women”, he would rather “lose readers than fool them”, “(a writer) transforms reality into fiction.” He quotes a Sicilian proverb: “the best word is the one that is not spoken.” Goethe has the final say: “To see Italy without Sicily, is not to have seen Italy at all.”
I like it when I discover a famous writer has a favourite writer that is a favourite writer of mine. The same thing that has appealed to me has appealed to a famous writer. In the case of myself and Sciascia: Montaigne.
April 25, 2026
Largely unknown to most Americans, Sciascia was among Italy's preeminent novelists, journalists and social commentators of the 20th century. Through his many mystery novels ("gialli"), he told the ugly story of the Sicilian mafia and how it grew from local criminal gangs in control of a handful of Sicilian towns to an international murderous shadow state that infiltrated every level of Italian politics and business and beyond. But, even more, Sciascia understood, as the title of Moorehead's biography suggests, the struggle with the mafia for Italy's soul, the fight against what Sciascia called "the great mosaic of evil" that ensnared Sicily since the end of World War II and eventually all of Italy, as Sciascia predicted it would. Among the many anomalies of Sciascia's life is that he died of natural causes, unlike many of his contemporaries who dared set a face against the mafia.
March 27, 2026
This book is a stone cold masterpiece.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews