The plot of 'L'altro capo del filo' (The other end of the thread), a Montalbano story, deals with the drama of thousands of migrants reaching Sicilian shores after rescue at sea. He produced his 100th book in 2016, when he was 90. The first book in the Montalbano series, 'La forma dell'acqua,' (The shape of water), was published in 1994, when the author was 69.Īndrea Camilleri answers reporters' questions as he arrives at Rome's Piccolo Eliseo theater, 2001 Among his works are a fictionalized biography of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello, who was born not far from Camilleri's hometown, and a dark novel about a sexually abused Sicilian boy's childhood during Fascism.īest-selling fame came late in life for Camilleri. While the Montalbano police stories shot him to fame, Camilleri was versatile in his output. Camilleri's works were translated into some 30 languages, including Chinese. 'I don't believe there has ever been another Italian author with so many books translated into English' in just a few years, Harvard University Romance languages professor Francesco Erspamer said. Tourists vied for turns to eat in the seaside trattoria where scenes of Montalbano's dining were filmed.Īndrea Camilleri, left, flanked by actor Luca Zingaretti, celebrating his 80th birthday at the RAI headquarters in Rome, 2005īetween filming seasons, they traipsed through the beach town of Punta Secca to photograph the seaside house with inviting terrace where Montalbano 'lived' and took dips in the same crystalline waters where the character would swim to clear his head when sleuthing got heavy.Ĭamilleri's books traveled well, dialect and all. The shows hooked millions of viewers with picture-postcard views of Baroque Sicilian towns. 'After 30 years in the theater as a director, dialogue for me becomes fundamental in the structure of the novel,' Camilleri told The Associated Press in an interview in his Rome apartment in 2009.
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Indeed, TV adaptations of the Montalbano books used generous chunks of dialogue straight out of the printed pages, so smooth was the transition from book to screen. He affectionately borrowed from the dialect of his Sicilian youth, which Camilleri saw as better lending itself to expressing characters' emotions.Ĭamilleri employed a brilliant ear for dialogue, drawing on his many years as a theater, radio and TV director and scriptwriter before his literary career took off when he was approaching old age. Referring to how his character would brusquely answer his phone, Zingaretti added that 'every time I will say, even alone, in my head, 'Montalbano sono' (it's Montalbano), wherever you went, you will smile, maybe smoking a cigarette and winking at me in a sign of understanding, just like the last time we saw each other,' in Sicily.Ĭamilleri's position at the top of the book sales charts in Italy - he often had several books high in the rankings in the same week - was even more remarkable because the author sprinkled many of his works with words that many Italians aren't familiar with. Andrea Camilleri reads a Luigi Priandello novel at Rome's Piccolo Eliseo theatre, 2001