Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1983) was a novelist and politician whose works were often set in his troubled, mafia-blighted homeland of Sicily. He hailed from Racalmuto in the south-west of the island and lived there for much of his life.
'During the last quarter century, Sciascia has made out of his curious Sicilian experience a literature that is not quite like anything else ever done by a European...' Gore Vidal.