Sicilian Uncles | Granta

  • Published: 02/01/2014
  • ISBN: 9781783780242
  • Granta Books
  • 208 pages

Sicilian Uncles

Leonardo Sciascia

Translated by N.S. Thompson

The expression ‘Sicilian uncle’ has the same sense in Italian as ‘Dutch uncle’ does in English, but with sinister overtones of betrayal and inconstancy. The four novellas in Sicilian Uncles, originally published in 1958, are political thrillers of a kind – the first fruits of Sciascia’s maturity. In these stories, illusions about ideology and history are lost in mirth, suffering and abandoned innocence. Each novella has its historical moment: the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Spanish Civil War, the death of Stalin, the ‘events’ of 1848. These occasions and their consequences are registered in the lives of Sciascia’s wonderfully drawn characters. Each has voice, wit and a private history which opens out onto the wider circumstances of his time.

A dazzling set of four novellas, glimpses of the trauma of Sicilian history through minutely assembled individual lives

Philip Hensher, Spectator

Sciascia is so infuriatingly good that you wonder whether his Protean talents are not those of a secret syndicate

Observer

The master of sophisticated detective fiction remains Leonardo Sciascia, whose novels are an extended investigation into what it means to be Sicilian

Guardian

The Author

Leonardo Sciascia was born in Sicily in 1912 and died there in 1989. A master of lucid and accessible prose, Sciascia worked with deceptively simple forms – books about crime, historical novels, political thrillers – in order to engage with the moral and historical problems of modern Italy, especially his native Sicily. His books are rooted in a particular culture but speak to anyone who has ever wondered how people can endure unbearable injustice. Equal Danger was made into the film Illustrious Corpses by Francesco Rosi.

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