La parte dello Spirito Santo. Sciascia vincitore del «Premio Letterario Prato»

This essay is concerned with a little-known episode in Leonardo Sciascia's life: his award of the “Prato Literary Prize” for Gli zii di Sicilia, in 1960. Thanks to a series of unpublished documents conserved in the Prato municipal archives, the present author reconstructs the background to the competition, whose panel of judges was made up of prominent writers and intellectuals of the period (including Italo Calvino, Diego Valeri and Piero Jahier), and throws some light on the reason for the resulting tie, which meant Sciascia received only a third of the prize - “the Holy Spirit's share” - as his writer friend, Mario La Cava, ironically dubbed it.