Candido or "A Dream Dreamed in Sicily" is unashamedly based on the formula of Voltaire's Candide. Candido Munafo is born in a grotto in the Sicilian countryside after his parents are forced to flee their home due to allied bombing. The time is July 1943 and Candido is born at the end of one age in Italy and the beginning of another.

The name Candido was like a blank page on which, Fascism having been erased, a new life must be written. The existence of a book which bore that name as its title or of a character who meandered about between Abares and Bulgarians, between Jesuits and the kingdom of Spain, was utterly unknown to the lawyer Francesco Maria Munafo, let alone the existence of Francois Marie Arouet, who had created the character.

His father Francesco however suspects that he may not be Candido's real father and this gives his wife cause to leave him. Maria Grazia falls in love with Captain John H. Dykes alias Hamlet of the occupying forces to whom Candido bears a striking resemblance. Candido lives for a time with his father until one day he betrays the confidence of one of his father's clients in a murder inquiry. This causes his father to suicide. For a time Candido lives with his grandfather and his only real friend is the archpriest who tutors him. Don Antonio will become a lifelong friend. In a less direct way Candido is also responsible for Don Antonio being dismissed as the archpriest. Together they join the local communist party and Candido naively tries to help the community through the donation of some of his land for the construction of a hospital and tries to expose the corruption of the existing system for deciding such things. This only alienates him from the whole town. He is expelled from the communist party.

"Do we want a scandal or do we want a hospital?" the members of the meeting were asked. Almost everyone wanted the hospital; Candido and a few others wanted both the hospital and the scandal. The secretary rose to speak. A long discourse about city affairs, about the Party's vision thereof, about the way in which the Party dealt with opposition, with criticism. Now and again he struck out ironically at Candido: for his exhibitionism, his conceit, his conduct, his paying no heed to the Party's warnings.

Expelled from the Party, Candido continues to tend to his land engaging in agriculture and improving his estate until his paternal relatives conspire to have him declared mentally incompetent so as to seize control of his estate. This they succeed in doing. After losing his first great love Paola, the former housekeeper of his grandfather, he meets Francesca, a kindred spirit and he is happy to be relieved of the burden of his estate so he and Francesca may be free to travel. Sciascia sketches a memorable portrait of the peculiar circumstances of the life of Candido and his town in Sicily. As Sciascia says in a note at the end of this book which was written in 1977 "I have tried to be quick, to be light. But ours are heavy times." I think Sciascia succeeded admirably in producing this wonderful work which is both funny and intelligent, compelling and fresh.