The Day of the Owl (Paladin Books) (New York Review Books Classics)

by Leonardo Sciascia

George Scialabba (Introduction), Archibald Colquhoun (Translator), and Anthony Oliver (Translator)

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.

• ISBN10: 159017061X
• ISBN13: 9781590170618
• Publish Date: 30 September 2003 (first published 25 June 1987)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: The New York Review of Books, Inc
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 136
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781590170618

Reviews

[brokentune]

4.5*

Mainlanders are decent enough but just don’t understand things.

I came across Sciascia when browsing through the Sicily travel guide last week, which recommended The Day of the Owl (alongside Lampedusa's The Leopard) as quintessential Sicilian reads.

The Day of the Owl begins with a murder that takes places in broad daylight in a town square. There is an abundance of witnesses but nobody claims to have seen anything or know anything significant that could lead the police to the killer.
And so the investigation, led by a "Northerner", begins to unravel the complicated net of obligation, honor, and lies that surrounds the killing and tries to describe the organisation of the mafia, at a time when its existence was still being denied and kept out of public view.

Sciascia wrote this in 1961 (8 years before Puzo would publish The Godfather), and although the novella is only 100+ pages in length, it has the depth of a full length novel, and leaves behind an unsettling notion of how big an influence the organisation must have had (or still has?) on the lives of people who are surrounded by the web of silence and obligations.

This was a fascinating read.