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The Sicilian master Leonardo Sciascia, widely acknowledged to be one of the outstanding figures of twentieth-century Italian literature, was the first novelist to venture freely into the closed world of the Mafia. To American readers, however, he remains a little-known secret. New York Review Books will reissue two of his major works. Here Sciascia presents a brilliant anatomy of a society based on secrets and lies, collusion and violence, as a death threat, a double murder, and a curiously complacent police force prompt a schoolteacher to pursue a private investigation—with consequences at once ironic and tragic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989) was born in Racamulto, Sicily. Starting in the 1950s, he established himself in Italy as a novelist and essayist, and also as a controversial commentator on political affairs. Among his many other books are Salt on the Wound, a biography of a Sicilian town, The Council of Egypt, an historical novel, and Todo Modo, a book in a genre that Sciascia could be said to have invented: the metaphysical mystery.

New York Times Book Review

[Sciascia] develops a particular kind of detective fiction where no culprit is ever found and apprehended, where no light can ever be shed, and where intrigues and corruption pervade society.