Todos Camilleros. How many followers of Montalbano's father?

One Hundred Years of Isolutidine. Not the Sicilian version of García Márquez's Macondo. But the centenary of another singular narrator from the southern hemisphere, Andrea Camilleri, born in 1925 in Porto Empedocle, in the province of Agrigento, who would have celebrated his centenary on September 6th.

A hundred years celebrated as if there were no tomorrow. Because who knows in a hundred years what place will Camilleri's literary history hold, and especially the Camillerism he spawned. Which is a raging river. And it branches out into a network of secondary and lower waterways: streams, rivulets, brooks, puddles, and brooks.

Who knows? For those of us who, like me, hold Spain in our hearts, the extraordinary destiny of Cervantes comes to mind. He was well advanced in years and accustomed to all sorts of disenchantments when he invented Don Quixote, his most famous character, a true cornerstone of world fiction. Cervantes finally achieved sudden success. And so did the detachment with which he was received by the "respectable" literary circles of Spain at the time. For them, the author of the first modern novel remained "a popular humorist of no importance."

If you will, there's another connection with Camilleri. The parable of the epigones. Quixote, as we know, was born as a parody of the popularity of the books of knighthood so popular in sixteenth-century Spain and as a satire on the increasingly bombastic detachment from reality offered by such celebrated knights of the time as Amadís de Gaula, Florambel de Lucea, and even Palmerín de Oliva. The plot is well known. Poor Quixote, a common hidalgo riding a common nag, longs to imitate the exploits he's read so much about. He battles the windmills of the regions of La Mancha, convinced they are legendary giants. He always emerges defeated in his clash with reality. But in return, he becomes, in turn, the founder of a lineage of hidalgos. All heroes of lost causes and failed revolutions. Including Márquez's Colonel Aureliano Buendía or Italo Calvino's Nonexistent Knight.

This year, then, we celebrate Camilleri. A centenary that is a fiery spectacle. A "Masculiata" of conferences, seminars, meetings, readings, presentations of research and books, even those for children, theater, and concerts. All decorated in memory of the patriarch who passed away in 2019. He was a writer, screenwriter, playwright, director, and even a Grand Officer of Merit of the Republic, an honor bestowed on him in 2003 "for his extraordinary contribution to Italian literature."

The "Camilleri's Kitchens" event in Ragusa Ibla. Sweet and sour caponata, sardines a beccafico, pasta 'ncasciata, and the ever-present cannoli.

It happens that the Repubblica red carpet also passes through the kitchens, because gluttony is a cardinal sin but also "one of the most refined solitary pleasures a man can enjoy," as Inspector Montalbano teaches. Thus, in Sicily, the hub of Camilleri's world, the international version of the poster was explored as Camilleri's Kitchens, or Camilleri's Foodies. Last June, in Ragusa Ibla, in the heart of the Sicilian baroque—a city of light and mourning, as everyone knows—the event took place. It was an opportunity to reflect on the literary and socioeconomic impact of Montalbano's universe. But above all, to immerse oneself in the triumph of gluttony and the senses that Camilleri tailored to his most popular character. It ended as it was supposed to. With rice arancini (rice balls) (in Sicily they're called bigender, an old diatribe), sweet and sour caponata, sarde a beccafico (stuffed sardines), and pasta 'ncasciata (cooked like only Adelina knows how). With a glass of chilled wine and the inevitable white ricotta and sugar cannoli, garnished with orange peel and chopped pistachios. Tastings, it goes without saying, are organized by Slow Food, which has made the right to pleasure and good food a global apostolate.

Those who were there "in person," testify that it felt like stepping right into the writer's pages. They say you only had to stand in line and buy a ticket to be able to smell the aromas and taste the flavors. Can you imagine? Every dish was a ritual, every meal a liturgy. The sensory climax of Montalbano-style cuisine was reached, of course, on the final evening. With a fitting soundtrack: tracks from the album Manzamà by the Mancuso Brothers, multi-instrumentalists Lorenzo and Onofrio, originally from Sutera, in the province of Caltanissetta, who received an honorary degree in Cognitive Sciences from the University of Messina in 2017.

"And so on and so forth," Montalbano would have added, drawing on his repertoire. Antonino Belcuore, special commissioner of the Chamber of Commerce of South-East Sicily, the organization that promoted the initiative, right off the bat expressed the hope that Camilleri's Kitchens would become "a replicable format."

Because Camilleri's culinary style is the most imitated. Italy is full of detectives, both men and women, who investigate by looking at the plate. It's there that food and "ammazzatine," eros and thanatos, coexist. Narrated in detail by typical products. From the Iblei Mountains, to the Apennines, to the Alps, from the villages of Lucania to the shores of Puglia. A table set as a sanctuary for the meditations necessary for the development of investigations.

It's true that, going down "through the branches," Montalbano's culinary thread sometimes becomes a "little thread." The discovery of hot water in the kitchens of the monks or in the secrets of monastic cloisters. With authors who call themselves historians of gastronomy, devotees of tradition. With printers finally happy to call themselves publishers.

One hundred years of isolutidine are a galaxy, a Camilleri Disneyland, a team of supporters always on the field. To keep at bay just as many detractors who have always considered Camilleri merely a "market phenomenon." It's a tough job for the family that safeguards the memory of their founder, juggling early admirers and new-generation followers. And for the traveling company of publishers, critics, writers, theater artists, and storytellers. Born and often raised under the ample mantle of Andrea Camilleri. All lined up at the "big party" that will be held in Agrigento on July 18th.

Events are unfolding relentlessly. In Italy and abroad. The website of the Camilleri Fund, chaired by Andreina, Andrea's eldest daughter, updates the most important initiatives. For example, the Italian cultural institutes and embassies involved in #Camilleri100 (the centenary hashtag) include Addis Ababa, Algiers, Hamburg, Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Krakow, Freiburg, Lyon, Madrid, Miami, New York, Oslo, Beijing, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Sofia, and Warsaw. And we're not done. There are loose ends waiting to be tied in the patriarch's name everywhere. Like the Italian Film Festival in Malaga last May, which opened with a screening of The Disappearance of Patò by Rocco Mortelliti, the film's director, Camilleri's disciple and also his son-in-law. Mortelliti confesses that he doesn't intend to attend all, absolutely all, of the Camilleri memorials scheduled. Because any small village, any imaginable Vigata, even the most marginal, believes it owes honor to the Maestro.

"A generous man with those who turned to him. A source of inspiration for everyone," says Rocco Mortelliti, director and son-in-law of the writer.

“I'm a little nauseous watching this frenzy,” says Rocco Mortelliti. Then he corrects himself: “Everyone has the right to talk about Andrea Camilleri, of course. My father-in-law was a generous man with those who turned to him. A source of inspiration for everyone. I'm also busy, though. I'm working on editing my new film, titled: Myopia - Hidden Identities. The theme? Andrea would have liked it: the search for truth in a world that prefers to look the other way, prefers hypocrisy.”

A hundred years of insolutism. Honor to Andrea Camilleri. In the history of post-unification literature, he nonetheless managed to legitimize Sicily. No longer the island symbol of Italian southern Italy, a metaphor for marginalization, backwardness, and illegality. For decades, Sicilians who emigrated to the north bore the burden of a concrete mistrust that prevented them even from renting houses. Terroni. A term that comes from the land, from the stingy clods plowed by peasants. Today, in politically correct Italy, it can even be used jokingly. But in the postwar period, it was pure racism. Linguist Bruno Migliorini was the first to document it in 1950, including the word in the appendix to a re-edition of Alfredo Panzini's Dizionario moderno.

He helped restore Sicily's dignity as a "myth-making factory." Over thirty million copies sold, but he still lacks "the glory he deserves."

Camilleri contributed significantly to restoring Sicilian dignity. He rewrote Sicily, bringing it back to its origins. To a narrative archetype. No longer and not just the "island of the vanquished" like Verga's I Malavoglia. Or the palaces nearing ruin where the aristocracy waltzes into its inevitable decline, as in Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard or Federico De Roberto's Viceré. Not the stark and raw Sicily of Sciascia, an author capable of exposing all its contradictions.

Rather, Sicily is a "myth factory." A theater of the soul that continuously produces stories and legends, irony and memory. With Camilleri, Trinacria becomes a brand, like Macondo. But while Macondo is a tropical microcosm buried in the Colombian rainforest "where reality has not yet invaded," Sicily is a Mediterranean microcosm. Much more within reach.

All credit to Andrea Camilleri. With over a hundred published titles, a third of which are dedicated to Inspector Montalbano, translated into thirty languages, and more than 30 million copies sold, he has managed to inspire people who had never even considered reading to pick up a book. Perhaps the same people who had spent more than fifteen years lounging in front of the TV watching the never-ending series Inspector Montalbano. The same people who wore mourning when the final episode aired on Rai on March 8, 2021, after 15 seasons and 37 episodes.

But "Camilleri's greatest triumph is the invention of the language," says Salvatore Silvano Nigro, a veteran critic and philologist. For him, having authored over 50 jacket covers for Camilleri's novels published by Sellerio, the Vigatese author is still a work in progress. "His success is undeniable, but as an author, Camilleri hasn't yet achieved the glory he deserves. He hasn't entered the history of Italian literature."

A phenomenology of Vigatese. It's a unique language, neither Sicilian nor Italian. An idiom that defines identity and, at the same time, universal. Hybrid, mixed-race. A blend of oral tradition, popular culture, and stylistic experimentation.

For this reason, the few literary critics who took Camilleri seriously starting in the 1990s – when he proved to be a “phenomenon” with sixty thousand copies sold per title, thanks to the fortune of Sellerio, his leading publisher – all immediately understood that the secret to his success was the language, the expressive experimentation conducted like a soundtrack, “two to the beat and two to the takeaway”.

Meanwhile, Italians had learned to weigh "cabbasisi" and "camurrie." And even the "ammazzatine" seemed less mournful. Far from Sciascia's "black writing." Camilleri's writing is colorful, an inoffensive Sicily, export-ready. The Sicily best described and narrated, even by those unable to utter a word of Sicilian. And it borders on the ridiculous.

Writer Giuseppina Torregrossa, an intrepid explorer of female identities and, as such, considered one of the least Camilleri-esque Sicilian authors, writes in Italian but has paid homage to the Maestro's language. "Dear Maestro," she writes in the afterword to the story "La targa di Camilleri," published by Rizzoli in 2015. She describes herself as a thirteen-year-old who moves from Palermo to Rome and starts high school. At school, as soon as she opens her mouth, her Sicilian accent and overly open vowels provoke laughter among her classmates. "At home I studied," she says, "but in class I was speechless. I took private lessons, but they were of no use against the teasing." There you have it. Torregrossa thanks Camilleri for restoring Sicilian speech to the Sicilians. And since she is also a doctor, she suggests anyone who has to go to the hospital to carry a Camilleri book with them. Laughter prolongs life.

One hundred years of solitude. Camilleri blazed a trail for a new "literary territoriality," and he did so by masking the effort of writing. His son-in-law, Rocco Mortelliti, recalls his teaching, which also encompasses experience in theater and directing: "The writer must be like an acrobat. The audience isn't interested in what lies behind the somersaults, behind the aerial acrobatics. You just descend and smile." Panta rei. Everything flows within the narrative chimera. There's no trick, no deception. That's how it is, if you like. The flipside of this coin are the "Camilleros," the new, crowded generation of writers and screenwriters who grew up under the illusion of being able to replicate Camilleri's success. And that they could do so easily. Believing that the ingredients are within everyone's reach. A bit of dialect, the themes of civic engagement that always resonate, quintessential timeless outfits, the ingenuity of the detective story that creates suspense, the charm of the historical novel that highlights characters, landscapes, and products.

There's a bit of everything. Some "Camilleros," especially followers of the Maestro's lectures in Rome, at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and the Silvio D'Amico Academy, have relocated the brand. Most have entrenched it even more in an increasingly static and sun-drenched Sicily. Where reality is exorcised so that it never again bursts forth as it does in the pages of Verga, Pirandello, De Roberto, Tomasi di Lampedusa, and Sciascia. It's certain. The echoes of the "Camilleros" will reverberate for many years to come. A hundred years of solitude.

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