I especially enjoyed including Il Giorno della Civetta on a syllabus when I was teaching a course called The Literature of Travel. It's a whodunit only in the narrowest sense -- there's a death (in fact more than one), and it wasn't by natural causes. (In English, the book is called "Day of the Owl.")
What it actually is: a novel about the mafia -- and about Sicily and the mafia. And hence apt for a course in which we attempted to analyze books that distilled the essence of a place.
When I teach it, I zero in on one scene, and in particular on one sentence. It's a scene in which a manual laborer finds himself at the local police station for questioning because his brother has been shot. The man has nothing to do with his brother's demise -- and hence nothing to fear -- but he is as uncomfortable as one can get, sitting in his local precinct at the mercy of the law and other forces.
And Sciascia slips in a line that is indelible -- even unfathomable -- to describe the brother's state of mind:
"Niente è la morte in confronto alla vergogna."
You can translate it like this: Death is nothing compared to shame.
And just like that, the Sicilian author challenges everything I know about life!
Because until I read that line, I thought nothing is worse than death.
Nothing tops death as far as unfortunate events that happen to you during your sojourn on Earth.
But Sciascia knows something I don't. He knows about a certain kind of man living in a particular society for whom pride trumps every other concern.
I mention this because 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of the book's publication in Italian, and also the centenary of Sciascia's birth (his life: 1921-1989).
For more information, you can read about Sciascia on the site of the Italian agency charged with promoting Italian literature:
https://www.newitalianbooks.it/leonardo-sciascia-in-other-languages/
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