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.