About this title: This short novel about the mafia is also a mesmerizing demonstration of how that organization sustains itself. It is both a beautifully written story and a brave act of denunciation. A dark-suited man is shot as he runs for a bus in the piazza of a small town. The investigating officer is a man who believes in the values of a democratic and modern society, and soon finds himself up against a wall of silence and vested interests. The narrative moves on two levels: that of the investigator, who reveals a chain of nasty crimes; and that of the bystanders and watchers, of those complicit with ...
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Description: Good. A Good copy with a Remainder Mark and wear to the covers and the extremities. Buy with confidence from an Independent Bookstore where the owners, a husband and wife team, have over 30 years of combined bookselling experience. read more
Description: New. Orders placed after Dec. 7 cannot be guaranteed delivery before Christmas. GREAT BUY. Brand New From US Distributor. WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER with OVER 3, 500, 000 BOOKS SOLD. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Date Published: 2003-09-01
ISBN-13:9781590170618ISBN:159017061X
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781590170618. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9781590170618ISBN:159017061X
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Description: Good. Used copy-Because of our high volume, we can not accurately describe each book, so we list the MINIMUM condition you can expect; most are better than the condition listed. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9781590170618ISBN:159017061X
Description: A man is shot dead as he runs to catch the bus in the piazza of a small Sicilian town. Captain Bellodi, the detective on the case, is new to his job and determined to prove himself. Bellodi suspects the Mafia, and his suspicions grow when he finds hi... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Granta Books
Date Published: 26/04/2001
ISBN-13:9781862074187ISBN:1862074186
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
"New York Review Books covers: designed especially to console us poor schlumps who can't have Prada shoes? Maybe not, but they do help that bitter pill go down easier.
I feel like Italians are better known for fashion and food than for their fiction. I did enjoy this spare, oddly poetic and mostly-dialogue 1960s detective novel about mafia killings in Sicily, but I couldn't help daydreaming hungrily about clothes, art, and sex. I know actually nothing about Fascism or the Mafia, so a lot of this book's context was too obscure for me, though in sort of a seductive, cool, Italian way... In the future I'd check out another Leonardo Sciascia, but I might be more likely to read a nonfiction history of twentieth-century Italian history and politics, especially if someone would give me a specific suggestion.
Now I want to go to Italy, but my clothes suck too bad.
I know this review doesn't really say much about the book, but that's because, for once, I don't have much to say about it."
"Sciascia's first crime novel is a portrait of the deeply-rooted corruption in post-war Sicily, of the mafia's stranglehold on business and politics. A fast-paced, minimalist, highly-polished novel with superb dialogue."
"A simple murder investigation becomes a fascinating, frustrating, and ultimately strangely moving glimpse of the hold the mafia had on Sicily in the early 1960s."
"A Sicilian, thinks Captain Bellodi, of the Carabinieri, doesn't really relate that much to the national government; that's just the outside entity that imposes taxes, police, military service. What counts--the only thing that counts--is the family, which defines a Sicilian in much the same way that a contract does between, say an Internet service provider and a client. Such a contract clearly states the rights and responsibilities of each side. This thinks Bellodi, who is from the mainland--from Parma, in central Italy--is the basis of the formal code of behavior that underlies all actions in Sicily, especially those of the mafia.
So reflects the Bellodi in this short (more a novella than novel), tautly written police procedural. It is a penetrating essay of 1960s Sicily and the almost allegorical human figures who populate the country. Bellodi is an idealistic, cultivated sensitive northerner; he meets his Sicilian counterpart in Don Arena, a mafia boss. These two characters make a whole, in terms of portraying Sicilian society and its effect of Italian politics.
Sciascia, a Sicilian who was considered one of Italy's foremost post-war writers, was a survivor of Fascist Italy and a critic of Sicilian life in a country he loved. That what he wrote about--the power of the mafia--was dangerous enough is clear from his afterword in which he makes the usual disclaimer that all characters are fictional. But Sciascia goes a big step further by saying that he did not have the freedom to write that most authors usually possess. "In books and films, the United States of America can have imbecile generals, corrupt judges, and crooked police. So can England, France...Sweden and so on. Italy has never had, has not and never will have them." He makes it clear that writing about the insidious control the mafia has over Italian life is dangerous.
It's intriguing to compare Sciascia's story with those of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano set in contemporary Sicily. Camilleri's stories occasionally include mafia figures, but he touches lightly if at all on their political influence. Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti series, set in Venice, does describe the spreading, like a cancer, of the mafia northwards into areas that were previously untouched. But while she writes about corruption in the Italian government, she does so in general terms, more as commentaries by Brunetti and his wife Paula on the state of Italian politics (sick). Even in the era of the post-Milan crackdown on the mafia, both authors write cautiously in that regard.
That this book was considered an important work is reflected in the fact that it was republished in the US by the New York Review of Books, with an excellent introduction by George Scialabba. Highly recommended."
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