The Tools of the Detective : Leonardo Sciascia’s Approach to Literature in the mid to late 1970s

Abstract

This article examines Sciascia’s factual investigations The Disappearance of Majorana (La scomparsa di Majorana, 1975) and The Moro Affair (L’affaire Moro, 1978), and demonstrates a clear shift in his investigative approach between the two texts. In his examination of the disappearance of the Physicist Ettore Majorana, Sciascia employs a ratiocinatic mathematical form of inquiry, reminiscent of Poe’s Dupin. Yet in his investigation into the Moro kidnapping three years later, Sciascia explicitly eschews Dupin’s methodology, preferring to draw on the techniques of Borges’ detective. This article studies the ways such a shift is manifested in Sciascia’s writing, and seeks to locate the changes in the socio-political climate of the 1970s.