Leonardo Sciascia Biography
Leonardo Sciascia (1921 - 1989) was born in Racalmuto on 8 January 1921, the eldest of three brothers. He studied in Caltanissetta, at the Teachers' Institute where he obtained the elementary school teacher's diploma in 1941. At the same time as his work as a teacher, he dedicated himself to literary activity, publishing critical writings and his first operettas; he collaborates with the Caltanisetta publisher Salvatore Sciascia and with the magazine “Galleria”. Leonardo Sciascia's first book entitled "The Fables of Dictatorship" was published in 1950. He came to represent one of the most lucid and non-conformist minds of Italian and European culture after the Second World War, an inexorable critic of the mafia, which raged unpunished in all sectors of society. Many plots of Leonardo Sciascia's works have been used as screenplays for highly successful films of social commitment, such as: "Porte Aperte" (by Gianni Amelio - 1990), "Cadaveri Eccellenti" (by Francesco Rosi - 1976) and "Il giorno of the owl" (by Damiano Damiani - 1968). Sciascia immediately revealed himself as a narrator and essayist with a strong interest in political and social reality. In 1956 his book "The Parishes of Regalpetra" attracted some attention at a national level. In 1957-58 Leonardo Sciascia moved to Rome, seconded to the Ministry of Education. When he returned to Sicily he abandoned teaching and moved to Caltanissetta where he worked for the school patronage. Between 1958 and 1961 he wrote the collection of short stories "Gli zii di Sicilia", composed of 7 stories in total. In 1961 he published the short novel, "Il giorno della civetta", a book denouncing the mafia phenomenon which attracted great attention in public opinion. In 1967 he moved to Palermo, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1970 he left his state job to dedicate himself to cultural activity with interventions and critical works. Sciascia also established himself internationally as a restless and unconventional intellectual who contested established powers and conventional interpretations of social reality. In 1975 he was elected as an independent on the PCI lists in the Palermo municipal elections but only two years later Sciascia resigned from office disappointed by the lack of effectiveness of his interventions in politics and by the ideological choices of the PCI. On the occasion of the kidnapping of the Honorable Moro of the Christian Democrats, Leonardo Sciascia expressed himself in favor of a negotiation for the salvation of the politician and wrote the pamphlet "L'affaire Moro" in which he also expressed his thoughts regarding the phenomenon of terrorism . In 1979 he was elected deputy of the Radical Party and took part in the commission of investigation into the Moro case. Sciascia died in Palermo on 20 November 1989 from an incurable disease.
