The late 2010s and early 20s saw a string of literary centenaries in Italy, celebrating a remarkable generation of writers. Born with the world’s first Fascist regime in 1922, they grew up immersed in Fascism’s all-penetrating web of conditioning and control. In the 1940s they lived through war, civil war and the near collapse of the Italian state, and found their way to forms of committed anti-Fascism, whether political, moral or both. They entered into mature adulthood alongside a reborn Italian democracy – though it would prove to be one tainted by division, inequality and injustice. Propelled by their distinctive originality, as well as by the growing globalisation of the publishing market, they acquired a certain niche status in the English-speaking world. Most of them died in or around that other great historical watershed, 1989, with the end of the Cold War and the ‘short 20th century’ they had confronted with such courage, insight and verve.

A roll call would include Natalia Ginzburg (1916–91), Primo Levi (1919–87), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–75), Italo Calvino (1923–85) – and Leonardo Sciascia (1921–89), the subject of this accomplished, balanced historical biography. This is Caroline Moorehead’s fourth book in ten years to focus on Italy, on stories of anti-Fascists (and occasional Fascists), resisters, Jews and exiles. Sciascia is a worthy subject, a lucid moralist and stylist with a stubborn focus on human fallibility and contradiction. What adds spice and specificity to his story is his deep-rooted connection to Sicily, its land, culture, art and literature and – of course – its dark history of corruption and violence as embodied in the Mafia.

Sciascia was born in the southeastern inland Sicilian town of Racalmuto. He reluctantly tolerated the absurdities of a Fascist education, welcomed liberating US troops in summer 1943 and developed a lifelong fascination with Stendhal, Pirandello and the French Enlightenment. He would remain in Sicily – between Racalmuto, Caltanissetta and Palermo