PALERMO – The Palermo city library was scheduled to be dedicated to Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia on Wednesday, the 99th anniversary of his birth.
A novelist, essayist and politician best known for his Mafia crime novel Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl,) Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, Sicily, on Jan 8. 1921. He had strong links to Palermo – a city councillor in the later 1970s, he lived in Palermo for 22 years and died there in 1989. He is considered one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Italy.