Andrea Camilleri

• Born: September 6, 1925
• Birthplace: Porto Empedocle, Sicily, Italy
• Died: July 17, 2019
• Place of death: Borgo, Italy

Biography

Andrea Camilleri was born on September 6, 1925, in the fishing village of Porto Empedocle on the southern coast of Sicily. Little is known of Camilleri’s childhood, save an early interest in the theater. (Nobel Prize–winning playwright Luigi Pirandello was a distant relative.) He began university study in 1944 but never finished, moving to Rome in 1948 to be part of its experimental theatrical community. During the two years he spent at the Silvio D’Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts, he directed the avant-garde works of contemporary absurdist dramatists including Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. Over the next twenty years, Camilleri wrote and directed successfully for theater and television. In 1977 he accepted an endowed chair in the film department of the Academy of Dramatic Arts, a post he would hold for nearly a quarter of a century.

Beginning in the late 1970s, however, Camilleri explored fiction, specifically the historic novel. Over the next decade, he completed four novels that investigated Sicilian history, most often the tempestuous nineteenth century characterized by tectonic political and cultural upheavals. The novels were only politely received (although La stagione della caccia, about a grisly mass state-sanctioned execution just before the Sicilian revolution of 1848, was a surprise best seller in 1992).

Apparently on a friendly dare from fellow Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia, Camilleri, then approaching seventy, outlined a murder mystery. The demands of the tight logic of the genre soon intrigued him, especially as he struggled with his other writing. Set in a fictitious Sicilian port named Vigàta, the story centered on a prominent, if crooked, land developer found dead in the town dump. To sort through the labyrinth of evidence that comes to implicate the local police chief and bishop as well as Sicily’s crime syndicate, Camilleri created Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who is distinguished by impeccable integrity, streetwise humor, and an unpretentious love of fine food. Within two weeks of its 1994 release, La forma dell’acqua (The Shape of Water) was a publishing sensation and Camilleri himself a most unlikely celebrity.

Over the next several years Camilleri completed a string of Montalbano mysteries, each a best seller. The works would be translated into over thirty languages and eventually sold more than thirty million copies. They also provided the inspiration for a long-running and popular series on Italian television that debuted in 1999, and which in turn further boosted the popularity of Camilleri's books. Viewers and readers alike were fascinated by the Inspector, by Camilleri’s vivid recreation of the Sicilian landscape (drawing on his considerable cinematic background), and by the deft sense of plotting (the narratives often centered on forgotten murders or on deaths that are not immediately seen as murders). So popular was the series that Camilleri’s hometown for a time actually changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigàta to attract tourists familiar with the detective series.

Although Camilleri used the financial security from the Montalbano series to pursue other projects (perhaps most notably 2005’s Privo di titolo, a historic novel that recreated the shadowy intrigues behind an infamous and unsolved killing of a Sicilian Communist firebrand in the 1920s), his detective series, characterized by a distinctly Sicilian sense of moral ambiguities and dark irony, became a cultural institution and his defining literary achievement. It also became known for its social commentary, critiquing everyone from politicians to the Mafia to the Vatican. Camilleri continued to publish installments through the 2010s, and in 2012 even reported having already completed a final Montalbano novel ready to be released when he decided he was done with the character or was unable to continue writing. The twenty-seventh novel in the series, Il cuoco dell’Alcyon, was released in 2019.

In June 2019 Camilleri was hospitalized following a heart attack. He died at the age of ninety-three on July 17, 2019. Translations of his later works continued to appear posthumously.

Bibliography

"Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano Books in Order." Pan Macmillan, 4 Mar. 2020, www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/crime-thriller/inspector-montalbano-series-in-order-camilleri. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.

Flood, Alison, and Angela Giuffrida. "Andrea Camilleri, Beloved Creator of Inspector Montalbano, Dies Aged 93." The Guardian, 17 July 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/17/andrea-camilleri-beloved-creator-of-inspector-montalbano-dies-aged-93. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.

Genzlinger, Neil. "Andrea Camilleri, Author of Inspector Montalbano Novels, Dies at 93." The New York Times, 17 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/obituaries/andrea-camilleri-dead.html. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.