A cadascú el que és seu (original 1966; edition 2009)

Thanks to reading Sciascia's Equal Danger, I discovered that I'd had this novella on my shelves for almost five years. And I liked it even better. Sciascia takes his epigraph from Edgar Allan Poe: "Let it not be supposed that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance." And indeed, while the protagonist, an educated but not street-wise schoolteacher, who still lives with his mother, earnestly tracks down clues to the double murder of a pair of hunting buddies, a doctor and a pharmacist, and becomes enamored of the doctor's beautiful widow, the reader develops his or her own suspicions and, in the end, it turns out almost everyone else in the Sicilian town knew what was going on all along.

For, like Equal Danger, this is a story only masquerading as a mystery. But it was even more enjoyable for me because, in addition to Sciascia's wonderful writing style and his pointed wit, this novel involves more complex and interesting characters, is more indirect in its indictment of the breadth of corruption, collusion, and complicity, and provides a broader portrait of many aspects of Sicilian society, including politics, the Church, and sex. I can't resist quoting this comment about the schoolteacher's reluctance to help turn in a guilty person, one among many that are both thoroughly delightful and eminently quotable:

"Laurana had a a kind of obscure pride that made him decisively reject the idea that just punishment should be administered to the guilty one through any intervention of his. His had been a human, intellectual curiosity that could not, and should not be confused with the interest of those whom society and State paid to capture and consign to the vengeance of the law persons who transgress or break it. At play in this obscure pride were the centuries of contempt that an oppressed people, an eternally vanquished people, had heaped on the law and all those who were its instrument; a conviction, still unquenched, held that the highest right and truest justice, if one really cares about it, if one is not prepared to entrust its execution to fate or God, can only come from the barrels of a gun." p.120

Un brave pharmacien d'une petite ville de Sicile est assassiné au cours d'une partie de chasse, ainsi que son compagnon le docteur Roscio. Un ami du docteur, le professeur Laurana, n'aura de cesse qu'il n'ait découvert l'auteur et les mobiles du crime - qui ne vise en fait que le seul Roscio. Après de discrètes et habiles enquêtes, Laurana parvient à résoudre l'énigme, mettant au jour un enchevêtrement sordide de basses intrigues. Mais les requins provinciaux qu'il a dérangés dans leur impunité l'assassineront à son tour avant qu'il ait eu le temps de parler.

I loved this book, and it's made me a Sciascia fan for life. It's one of those novels that I started reading for the crime fiction element, but ended up loving it for other, non-crime related reasons. Although the crime fiction aspect of this book will keep the reader turning pages trying to figure out exactly what happened, the story operates on other levels as well. It is a commentary on the justice system, party politics, the Church, and other facets of Sicilian culture. And, as di Piero notes in the introduction, Sciascia

"used storytelling as an instrument for investigating and attacking the ethos of a culture -- the insular, mafia-saturated culture of Sicily -- which he believed to a metaphor of the world."

One of the basic points the author makes throughout this book is that there are various levels of criminality in which we are all complicit, so in that sense, the metaphor is not too far off the mark.

Readers of more socially and politically-oriented crime fiction will like this book, as will readers of literary fiction. It's intelligent, thought-provoking and frankly, is very high on my list of good books for the year.

If you want a more lengthy review, you'll find it here. ( )

[3.5 stars]
I bought this because 1) I've wanted to get around to Sciascia, 2) it was on sale, and 3) it caught my eye because of what Calvino supposedly wrote to Sciascia re: this book -- that it was a detective novel that wasn't a detective novel, where the mystery is dismantled before your eyes.

So we have a double murder, and a small-town professor who through some kind of boredom and vanity tries to solve the case by himself. A small-town professor who's single and lives with his mother in that quintessential Italian way that only happens in Italy it seems -- and this is not some throw-away detail, an easy way to caricature an Italian (stereo)type: it's essential to the story.

But it's not really about the murder, nor is it about the small-town professor (though in some ways it might be that too). It's really about Sicily, and by extension, about Italy.

Usually I start with the first line, or the first paragraph. In this case, it's all in the title: "A ciascuno il suo" -- "To each his own". Everyone knows (or thinks they know) what happened. "Despite the lack of any clues...there was no one in the town who hadn't already, on his own, secretly, resolved (or almost) the mystery."[1]

Here, in Sicily, in Italy, what doesn't concern me doesn't concern me. There's an almost tribal closure, and a lack of civic-mindedness that runs through all aspects of society, slowly poisoning it. It's what Calvino is talking about when he says that this book demonstrates "the impossibility of a detective novel in the Sicilian setting."[2]

The story is told with irony, because how else could you stand it?

[1] my translation from the 2011 Gli Adelphi edition, page 30. "Pur mancando ogni indizio...non c'era uno nel paese che non avesse già, per conto suo, segretamente, risolto o quasi il mistero."
[2] my translation, page 3. "...come viene dimostrata l'impossibilità del romanzo giallo nell'ambiente siciliano." ( )

So much about this book is wonderful. It's beautifully structured even in translation. The clues break upon the mind of the reader with a kind of slow dazzle of realization. I've always valued fiction that provides deep insight into other cultures. Pamuk, for instance, Borges or Bulgakov. The list is endless. All show us a world we never knew existed. The day to day lives of the people. I read another novel by Sciascia, also published by New York Review Books, THE DAY OF THE OWL, which didn't affect me nearly as much as this one. It's a re-readable thriller--and you don't come across many of those. ( )