Equal Danger - Hardcover

Sciascia, Leonardo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224009486 ISBN 13: 9780224009485

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1974

Synopsis

District Attorney Varga is shot dead while picking a sprig of jasmine. Then Judge Sanza is killed. Then Judge Azar. Is this string of murders an individual vendetta or a more sinister plot? The charming Inspector Rogas is determined to find out. The pursuit of truth and justice are Rogas's vocation, but his work is frustrated by a system which defies his understanding. He needs a key, a way in, a map, and he is sure that his chief suspect Cres can provide it...The book, written in 1971, uncannily prefigures the Red Brigade's subsequent killing of magistrates and the Catholic-Communist pact of the late 1970s in Italy. Developed under Sciascia's hand in the spirit of a parody, Equal Danger has come to be regarded as a wide-ranging political thriller, one of the masterpieces of the genre.

About this title

Review

By "the master of sophisticated detective fiction"

Among Sicilian writers Leonardo Sciascia is supreme. His books are both lucid and mysterious; they address complex, public subjects with clarity and elegance; they move with the pace of thrillers, and have the resonance of poetry.
-- Philip Hensher, The Spectator

The accessibility and beauty of Sciascia's prose suggest he wanted it to be an antidote to the silent complicity and self--deception confronting both him and his heroes. When he wrote about crime, he was also writing about truth, solitude and belonging.
-- The Observer

About the Author

LEONARDO SCIASCIA was born in Sicily in 1912 and died there in 1989. Like Joseph Roth, Sciascia worked with deceptively simple forms - books about crime, historical novels, political thrillers - and was a master of lucid and accessible prose. This polished surface conceals great depths of sophistication and an intense engagement with the moral and historical problems of modern Italy, especially of his native Sicily. His books are rooted in a particular culture; they speak to anyone who has ever wondered how people can endure unbearable injustice. .

Edition details

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224009486
• ISBN 13: 9780224009485
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128