In 1986, Italian authorities built a fortified bunker inside a Palermo prison to hold the largest mafia trial in history. Among the 471 defendants rattling their cages was the entire leadership of the Sicilian Mob. In the press gallery sat Leonardo Sciascia, a novelist whose detective stories had done more to expose the mafia’s reality than any official effort. "I learnt to understand the mafia from his books," prosecutor Giovanni Falcone said.

Caroline Moorehead’s new biography A Sicilian Man examines how Sciascia became what Italians saw as a moral compass on organized crime, as reviewed in The Times. Born in 1921 in Racalmuto, a village near Agrigento, Sciascia absorbed the rhythms of mafia life from childhood. He saw local bosses communicate through glances and hand gestures rather than words. In one chilling scene from his youth, a capo visited a shopkeeper who owed money, stroked the man’s daughter’s hair, and remarked: "She seems almost alive."

His 1961 novel The Day of the Owl broke the silence around mafia-state collusion at a time when officials still denied the organization existed. "Perhaps the whole of Italy is becoming like Sicily," his detective speculates. "The line of the palm tree is moving north." Sciascia’s books sold widely even as authorities dismissed the Mob as folklore. Asked why the mafia never came for him, Sciascia had a theory: "The mafia doesn’t read books." And fear? "If you have to ask yourself if you are afraid then you cease to live."

Previously: • New York mob boss whacked for first time since ’80s • Next Mafia game goes back to basics by rewinding to early 1900s Sicily

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