LEONARDO SCIASCIA — THE DAY OF THE OWL

Image: from the film adaptation

A murder, an investigation. A denial: the mafia was not responsible; there is no mafia at all. In a very brief span of pages this novel situates the idea of the mafia to an existential plane. An interesting technique Mr. Sciascia uses to pursue this idea is to strip a lot of the powerful figures in the novel — the judges and government officials — of distinct identities, so that as they repeat the mantra, ‘there is no mafia,’ it seems to come from a blank wall of state and supra-national authority. This can also be confusing, but, acceptable; again, I like to see the mafia tale operating in a deeper realm as it does here; it pointed out to me that, while I’m very much a fanboy of American mafia movies, they are very much capitalist tales, with the attendant sugar rush of rises and falls based on capitalist cultural paradigms. It’s refreshing to see that the Italian take on this goes deeper and becomes much more a conversation about state power.