Leonardo Sciascia; Sicilian Novelist Wrote of the Mafia

Leonardo Sciascia, 68, a Sicilian novelist who wrote of the Mafia, official corruption and Italy’s political class. Sciascia was part of the Sicilian literary tradition of Luigi Pirandello and Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who explored the character of people whose lives were molded by the island’s history. Among Sciascia’s best-known works were “The Day of the Owl,” “The Sicilian Relatives” and “The Wine-Dark Sea,” a collection of short stories about Sicilians coping with authority figures. One of Sciascia’s most controversial works, “The Moro Affair,” explored the 1978 kidnaping and murder of former Premier Aldo Moro by the leftist Red Brigades. Asked once whether he feared a Mafia reprisal, Sciascia replied: “The Mafia doesn’t read literature.” Having left the Communist Party, Sciascia became in the last years of his life a member of the Radical Party, which better suited his self-described anarchic streak: “I have always had a vision of power as a criminal act,” he once wrote: “. . . the power of the state, the power of the Mafia.” He was elected as a Radical to both the Italian and the European Parliament. In Palermo, Sicily, on Monday after a long history of kidney problems.