|
Showing 1 - 15 of
15 matches in All Departments
Secret deals, powerful men and murder - One Way or Another is a
chillingly prophetic work. The Knight and Death features a nameless
(and apparently terminally ill) detective investigating the murder
of a lawyer believed to have been killed by a mysterious
revolutionary group. The detective thinks otherwise and sets out to
prove that powerful business interests were involved, with the
revolutionary group invented to cover up the real reasons behind
the murder.
Here are some of Sciascia's greatest stories - brief and haunting,
the realist tradition at its best. In one tale a couple of men
talk, cynically yet earnestly, about the etymology of the word
'mafia' - who they are, and why their interest is so piqued by the
word, becomes apparent with frightening clarity. In another story a
group of peasants are taken on board ship and promised that they
will be put ashore illegally at Trenton, New Jersey; after a long
time at sea, their landfall is far from what they expected. And
Mussolini himself takes an interest in the case of Aleister
Crowley, whose presence in Sicily has become an embarrassment.
|
The Day Of The Owl (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Translated by Arthur Oliver
|
R289
R230
Discovery Miles 2 300
Save R59 (20%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
In the piazza, a man lies dead. No one will say if they witnessed
his killing. This presents a challenge to the investigating
officer, a man who earnestly believes in the values of a democratic
and modern society. Indeed, his enquiries are soon blocked off by a
wall of silence and vested interests; he must work against the
community to save it and expose the truth.The narrative moves on
two levels: that of the investigator, who reveals a chain of savage
crimes; and that of the bystanders and watchers, of those complicit
with secret power, whose gossipy, furtive conversations have only
one end - to stop the truth coming out. This novel about the Mafia
is also a mesmerizing demonstration of how that organization
sustains itself. It is both a beautifully, tautly written story and
a brave act of denunciation.
|
Sicilian Uncles (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Translated by N.S. Thompson
|
R265
R212
Discovery Miles 2 120
Save R53 (20%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
The expression 'Sicilian uncle' has the same sense in Italian as
'Dutch uncle' does in English, but with sinister overtones of
betrayal and inconstancy. The four novellas in Sicilian Uncles,
originally published in 1958, are political thrillers of a kind -
the first fruits of Sciascia's maturity. In these stories,
illusions about ideology and history are lost in mirth, suffering
and abandoned innocence. Each novella has its historical moment:
the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Spanish Civil War, the death of
Stalin, the 'events' of 1848. These occasions and their
consequences are registered in the lives of Sciascia's wonderfully
drawn characters. Each has voice, wit and a private history which
opens out onto the wider circumstances of his time.
|
Equal Danger (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Translated by Adrienne Foulke
|
R261
R208
Discovery Miles 2 080
Save R53 (20%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
District Attorney Varga is shot dead while picking a sprig of
jasmine. Then Judge Sanza is killed. Then Judge Azar. Is this
string of murders an individual vendetta or a more sinister plot?
The charming Inspector Rogas is determined to find out. The pursuit
of truth and justice are Rogas's vocation, but his work is
frustrated by a system which defies his understanding. He needs a
key, a way in, a map, and he is sure that his chief suspect Cres
can provide it... The book, written in 1971, uncannily prefigures
the Red Brigade's subsequent killing of magistrates and the
Catholic-Communist pact of the late 1970s in Italy. Developed under
Sciascia's hand in the spirit of a parody, Equal Danger has come to
be regarded as a wide-ranging political thriller, one of the
masterpieces of the genre.
|
The Day of the Owl (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Introduction by George Scialabba; Translated by Archibald Colquhoun, Anthony Oliver
|
R361
R301
Discovery Miles 3 010
Save R60 (17%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
A man is shot dead as he runs to catch the bus in the piazza of a
small Sicilian town. Captain Bellodi, the detective on the case, is
new to his job and determined to prove himself. Bellodi suspects
the Mafia, and his suspicions grow when he finds himself up against
an apparently unbreachable wall of silence. A surprise turn puts
him on the track of a series of nasty crimes. But all the while
Bellodi's investigation is being carefully monitored by a host of
observers, near and far. They share a single concern: to keep the
truth from coming out.
This short, beautifully paced novel is a mesmerizing description of
the Mafia at work.
This is a short, powerful novel dealing with the complicities and
accomodations of power within Italian politics.
The owner of a construction company is shot twice and killed in the
light of day on the piazza as he tries to catch a bus that is about
to leave. The driver, passengers, and conductor deny having seen
anything. In his most famous novel, which debuted in 1961, Sciascia
describes the structure of the mafia for the first time - and this
during a period when the public denied its existence - and expertly
characterized its organization. In the series Law in Art - Art in
Law (Recht in der Kunst - Kunst im Recht), edited by Thomas
Vormbaum, Sciascia's classic tale is also analyzed by renowned
observers: Gisela SchlA1/4ter provides literary commentary, Daniele
Negri offers legal commentary.
|
The Wine-Dark Sea (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Introduction by Albert Mobilio; Translated by Avril Bardoni
|
R459
R383
Discovery Miles 3 830
Save R76 (17%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
Leonardo Sciascia was an outstanding and controversial presence in
twentieth-century Italian literary and intellectual life. Writing
about his native Sicily and its culture of secrecy and suspicion,
Sciascia matched sympathy with skepticism, unflinching intelligence
with a streetfighter's intransigent poise. Sciascia was
particularly admired for his short stories, and The Wine-Dark Sea
offers what he considered his best work in the genre: thirteen
spare and trenchant miniatures that range in subject from village
idiots to mafia dons, marital spats to American dreams. Here, in
unforgettable form, Sciascia examines the contradictions--sometimes
comic, sometimes deadly, and sometimes both--of Sicily's turbulent
history and day-to-day life.
From one of modern Italy's greatest writers come four flawless
novellas that combine history and fiction while mapping the
treacherous relations between individuals and the state. Whether
set amid the paranoia of the fascist past or the criminal and
political labyrinths of present-day Italy, these Kafkaesque
novellas are thrillers of moral gravity, beautifully written and
relentlessly engrossing.
|
The Moro Affair (Paperback)
Leonardo Sciascia; Introduction by Peter Robb
|
R431
R359
Discovery Miles 3 590
Save R72 (17%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
On March 16, 1978 Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister of Italy, was
ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed his escort
and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the
terrorist group the Red Brigades announced that Moro was in their
hands; on March 18 they said he would be tried in a "people's court
of justice." Seven weeks later Moro's body was discovered in the
trunk of a car parked in the crowded center of Rome.
"The Moro Affair" presents a chilling picture of how a secretive
government and a ruthless terrorist faction help to keep each other
in business.
Also included in this book is "The Mystery of Majorana," Sciascia's
fascinating investigation of the disappearance of a major Italian
physicist during Mussolini's regime.
A boring afternoon in August, Mr. Manno, a pharmacist from a small
Sicilian town, receives a threatening anonymous "die for what you
did." Manno, without knowing what the note refers, the complaint
brought hardship and forgotten the matter. But the day it was open
season game, the pharmacist killed in the bush with another
respectable villager, the doctor Roscio.
|
|