Rita Severi (University of Verona, Italy)
NEW ITALIAN WRITERS. MYSTERY WRITING IN ITALY IN CONTEXT *
Italian writers are enjoying a new season of popularity all over the world. Some writers are interested mainly in describing Italian society and its existential problems, such as the gap that is acutely felt between parents and children (Giovanni Veronesi), some prefer to deal mainly with narrative techniques (Alessandro Baricco), some with the criminal undercurrents that trouble and disturb daily life and daily activities, especially in the South (Roberto Saviano), some with Italian life styles, especially in the 1980s, with its sexual mores (Alberto Arbasino, Pier Vittorio Tondelli). All these features, -- thematic, social, technical -- are presently quite evident in the novels of the new wave of mystery writers that stylistically use highly effective, currently- spoken Italian, in well-organized, often gripping plots.
Since the 1990s authors of mystery, detective and crime novels have increased enormously, outnumbering novelists of other more “classical” genres and have achieved so much widespread success that in many European countries they are now recognized as a distinct group of writers dealing with what the French call “Pasta Polar” and the Germans “Mord und Pasta”. Perhaps in English, following the fashion of the “Spaghetti Western” movies, these narratives could be labelled “spaghetti mysteries”. Among its many outstanding exponents I‘ll briefly list those whose works are available in English1.
Niccolò Ammaniti, born in Rome, is the acclaimed writer of Io non ho paura/I’m not scared , an international bestseller which was also turned into a movie, that dealt with a kidnapping, full of psychological insight and fictionalized horror, probably only surpassed by real life experience.
Massimo Carlotto, born in Padua, after the sour taste of prison, began his search into criminal mentality.
Sandrone Dazieri from Cremona has recently become famous for his book La cura del gorilla/The Cure of the Gorilla of which a version for the screen is in preparation.
1* Lecture delivered at the “Italian Festival”, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, USA, March 27,
2008;revised in January 2015.
See the anthology, Crimini. The Bitter Lemon Book of Italian Crime Fiction, ed. by G. De Cataldo, London, Bitter Lemon Press, 2007.
Diego De Silva’s I Want to Watch was translated in 2007. As a Neapolitan he is keenly aware of the social background of crime fiction.
Giancarlo de Cataldo is an appeals court judge in Rome. His novel Romanzo Criminale was released as a film in 2005 and later became a serialized television fiction.
Giorgio Faletti, who lives outside the city of Asti, comedian, actor, songwriter, is the much acclaimed author of Io uccido which sold over a million copies.
Marcello Fois, born in Nuoro, won the Italo Calvino prize in 1992. Two of his novels have been translated into English: The Advocate and Blood from the Skies.
Gianrico Carofiglio, magistrate from Bari, operating in the anti-Mafia committee, is the author of a few prize-winning novels, beginning with Testimone inconsapevole (2002) /Involuntary Witness, some reviewed on the TLS.
Two other interesting authors that are still unavailable in English are the botanist and university researcher Santo Piazzese, whose ideal crime setting is the city of Palermo, and the lawyer Nino Filastò, who turns Florence, the great capital of Renaissance art, into a nest of art thieves, of forgery, deception and corruption2.
This list is necessarily incomplete, but it would be misleading if I didn’t add the two most prominent writers of crime fiction in Italy: Andrea Camilleri and Carlo Lucarelli. Andrea Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle, Sicily in 1925 in a well-to-do household. Pirandello was one of his mother’s nephews. The very young Andrea met him when he was seven years old. In 1942 he became stage director and his career was launched first in the theatre then in television. He published his first novel in 1978, but he became famous only when he invented Salvo Montalbano, the police commissioner, posted in the imaginary town of Vigata. In the past ten years he has sold more than 2.5 million books (published by Elvira Sellerio), a record for an Italian writer! The series, starring inspector Montalbano, has been filmed for Italian television and the episodes were transmitted on Sunday night in 2006-2007. The DVDs are now available, but only in Italian.
Reading the 8 books that Andrea Camilleri has dedicated to Salvo Montalbano, you will realize how they are structured. First of all the most intriguing aspect is the language that Camilleri has invented: a mixture of Sicilian dialect and Italian which is almost impossible to reproduce in another language. The local references and colour has been
2 See the program of the “Krimifestival”, Munchen 2003 and the television program broadcast by ARTE:
Themenabend: “Im Krimi durch Italien”, Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 10 p.m. The director of the documentary film was Susanne Dobke.
translated in English by Stephen Sartarelli sometimes with a periphrasis, sometimes by leaving the term in Italian followed by an explanatory sentence, sometimes by recurring to the use of end notes. Every case solved by Montalbano seems to follow an established set of rules. The commissario is always a hero3 with a complex personality endowed with
great psychological insight, intuitive, loyal, passionate more in his eating habits than in love, devoted to his men, who are ready to follow him everywhere while he is always prepared to jump down from his bed, even in the middle of the night. The setting of the novels is always the same imaginary/literary landscape from Vigata to Montelusa to Brancato, places that remind us inevitably of Porto Empedocle, Agrigento and Racalmuto4. The novel usually starts with the announcement of a suspicious death.
Often as the mystery unravels this death is linked to the Mafia or to some corrupted agency. Later on another corpse is discovered; sometimes multiple, unexplained deaths occur. Usually the inspector, as he interrogates the various suspects, discovers not only the reasons for the criminal deaths, but also that they are linked. As the action progresses, the reader gets more acquainted with Montalbano in his private life. He’s a gourmet who loves fish and pasta. He lives in a house on a beach where he often swims. Sometimes his girlfriend, Lia, who lives in Liguria, flies down to visit him. He never goes to her. When she leaves, he doesn’t seem to miss her particularly. He’s fond of women, but not a typical Sicilian womanizer. He’s a likeable man in his late thirties with a difficult job, but surrounded by many friends.
When the case is finally solved all the pieces of the puzzle are neatly inserted in their place. Life that seemed so complicated becomes simple again and the order that was disrupted returns to its usual arrangement.
In The Terra-Cotta Dog(Viking-Penguin, 2002)/Il Cane di Terracotta (1996) A sick Mafia boss, Tano, obtains a secret interview with Montalbano in which he confesses that, since he is about to die, he wants to be arrested. Montalbano prepares a spectacular arrest, but while the boss is being transferred to prison, he is shot by the Mafia. Before dying, the boss whispers a secret in Montalbano’s ear. While this operation was taking place, the police is alerted about a robbery in a supermarket. When the owner is interrogated by Montalbano, he says that it was really a joke because the stolen goods were returned. Montalbano in the meantime sets out to discover if the boss has told him the truth. He soon discovers a cave full of ammunition, guns, police uniforms, a secret warehouse
3 Which is exactly the opposite of what Eric Hobsbawm wanted to prove in an article in the “TLS”, June 1961, p. 6,
when he declared “The Criminal as Hero and Myth”.
4 M. Clausi, D. Leone, G. Lo Bocchiamo, A. Pancucci Amarù, D. Ragusa, I luoghi di Montalbano. Una guida, Palermo,
where the Mafia kept its equipment in preparation for a possible terrorist attack. Tano has revealed the truth to him. Montalbano also learns that the truck that delivered the goods to the supermarket was actually carrying the ammunition and that the robbery was staged in order to make the police concentrate their attention on a false track. In the cave, under an arcade that had been closed by a wooden panel, Montalbano discovers two mummified corpses side by side with a terra-cotta dog guarding them and a bowl full of old coins. Montalbano gains more information from a childhood friend who is also an informer for the Mafia. During a meeting with his informer, two killers from the Mafia approach Montalbano’s car and start shooting, killing his friend. Montalbano manages to get out of the car but a bullet reaches him. Wounded, he is brought to the hospital. After a few weeks he resumes his quest. The owner of the supermarket who had helped the Mafia is killed. The new boss is taking his revenge. Montalbano turns his attention to the mystery of the two corpses, and through a series of lucky coincidences, he discovers that they are Lisetta and Mario, killed in 1943. Lisetta had been raped by her father. She left her home to run away with Mario, a sailor. They took refuge in the cave that belonged to the property of Lillo Rizzitano, but were pursued by Lisetta’s father who killed them both. Lillo Rizzitano who witnessed the murder, in self- defence and full of disgust for the horror he had seen, struck Lisetta’s father with an iron rod and killed him. Montalbano sends for Rizzitano, an old man, who confesses his crime saying that he has never repented. Rizzitano, who had written a thesis on the Seven Sleepers (chapter 22, p. 282), informs the inspector that he was the one who arranged the burial of the two young victims by following the text of the Sura 18 of the Koran where there’s the description of a young couple put to sleep in a cave guarded by a dog.
In a Camilleri mystery the Mafia looms in the background and its crimes are not always punished. In the Terra-Cotta Dog, the Mafia kills the boss, the supermarket owner and an informer. It’s henchmen wound Montalbano. The inspector, though, discovers its secret plan and then unravels the mystery of the two young lovers. Cultural references abound. They are literary: from Montalbano who reads Faulkner to the Author’s note that reveals that the idea for the story originally came to him from The People of the Cave by the Egyptian writers Taufik al-Hakim, or culinary: there are recipes for “pasta con le sarde” or “purpi alla carrettera”; or social from the concept of “man of honor” to “omertà”; or historical: from “repubblichini” to “Giovani Italiane”, or political, from “the government was red, black, or sky blue” to “leghisti”.
Since Camilleri is a skilful writer he has the ability to blend crime and mystery within the cultural Sicilian setting, offering the reader a vision of the island from within that is a reflection of a vision of the “Continent”, Italy. Although Sicily occupies a small territory, Camilleri is always aware of its cultural stratifications, the Mediterranean heritage in classical times, then, later, in modern times, the Spanish, the French, the English, and then, the great exodus to America and the return of some of the natives . Therefore, reading a Montalbano mystery is not only like playing a game of chess, a delight for the mind, it’s also an invitation, through an inventive language, to explore what might be called “a collective Sicilian mentality” or the anthropology of Sicily. In this case, the question is open to debate.
Carlo Lucarelli was born in Parma in 1960, but he lives outside Bologna. He is considered a media artist, writer, TV performer, journalist. Many of his short stories, dealing mostly with crime and corruption, have been adopted by the film industry or televised. Two novels, Carte Blanche and The Damned Season(2007)5, of his trilogy
featuring Commissario De Luca have been translated by Europa editions. His television program “Blue Notte”, broadcast in 2006, in which Lucarelli narrated famous real crimes and some of the most terrifying recent events of Italian history, was extremely popular and successful. This was due also to the expertise and clarity that he demonstrated in the re-enactment of each criminal action. His books have been translated, in the U.S.A. by City Lights and in the U.K. by The Harvill Press. His first novels, the trilogy with Inspector De Luca as protagonist, are typical noirs in the French tradition. Set in the last months of World War II, Lucarelli in the novels analyzes a dramatic phase in Italian politics during which the nation, half Fascist, half Partisan, risked a civil war, while at the same time, brutal murders were the result of a widespread yearning for revenge. Personally I prefer his realistic documentary narratives in which he strives to make light in the darkness that still surrounds famous murder cases dating back some twenty years ago, or his linear, documented re-telling of the Italian stragi, the terrorist attacks that have jeopardized the country and weakened its stamina in the past forty years or more.
Lucarelli, like many of the new mystery writers, is at his best when he portrays his own city, Bologna, known as “la grassa, la dotta”, but since 1977, when it became the stage of a major student insurrection, considered one of the most politicized places in Italy, or,
5 Carlo Lucarelli, The Damned Season, (L’estate torbida, Palermo, Sellerio, 1991, English trans. Michael Reynolds),
perhaps, Europe. Medieval Bologna with its many arcades on a foggy winter night can be very suggestive and frightening so it’s not surprising that even John Grisham chose it as the perfect location for his thriller, The Broker. In Mistero in Blu, Lucarelli narrates one of the most gruesome crimes that took place in Bologna, il “caso Alinovi”6.
Francesca Alinovi, a young art history lecturer at the famous Arts Faculty of the University of Bologna, was stabbed to death on June 15, 1983, with what could have been a small penknife, that left 47 wounds. Her body seemed to be full of tiny cuts except for her neck where the knife had left a gash when it neatly cut her jugular vein. Francesca was an art critic and she was making a name for herself in contemporary art circles. When the police began investigating they discovered that Francesca had been madly in love with one of her students, a young painter called Francesco Ciancabilla. All the clues lead to Ciancabilla. He was the last person she saw before dying. Ciancabilla therefore was arrested and put to trial. At first the court decided to acquit him, but Francesca’s family demanded an appeal. During the trial Ciancabilla was convicted, but then he managed to escape. He was arrested only in 1997 and sentenced to 12 years of prison. Lucarelli, just as Sherlock Holmes used to do, narrates all the events and considers what is certain, documented evidence against what is uncertain, hearsay, or simply gossip. He reads the records of the trials and the related newspaper articles and his reconstruction casts a few doubts on the whole case, especially when he discovers that three other students from the Faculty had been murdered between December 1982 and July 1983. Ciancabilla, like Francesca Alinovi, was an occasional drug user. Francesca had gone to Turkey the previous year where she had a flirt with a man she defines “the drug boss”. Although the case is closed the conclusion was not completely convincing. Many still think that perhaps Ciancabilla was just a scapegoat and that the drug trail might have revealed the real culprit. Mistero in blu re-tells 7 famous crime cases in which either justice doesn’t reach a convincing verdict, or there’s no justice at all. This short booklet is certainly exemplary, paradigmatic, of the lack of justice in Italy.
Although the crime rate has diminished in the past twenty years, the thirst for justice in Italy is stronger than ever. Since the first Berlusconi government in 1994, that has been called by Alexander Stille “the sack of Rome”7, a new awareness about crime,
corruption, embezzlement, bribes, “Manipulite”, “Tangentopoli”, organized crime,
6 C. Lucarelli, Mistero in blu, Torino, Einaudi, 1999, pp. 3-29.
7 A. Stille, The Sack of Rome. Media+Money+Celebrity=Power=Silvio Berlusconi, New York, Penguin, 2007 (1st ed.
mafia, camorra, or, as Roberto Saviano has called it “Gomorra”, calls for a judiciary system that will really work, that will speedily solve all the thousands of cases that have been waiting years to stand trial.
Writers of “gialli” like Lucarelli answer to this need for justice. Undoubtedly one of the reasons why so much crime fiction has been published successfully in the past twenty years is certainly due to the fact that it proposes solutions: crimes are solved, culprits are found, and just verdicts are meted out. The mystery novel belongs to the popular genre of literature of evasion. Italian mystery writers have revolutionized the genre by introducing political commitment, justice, fairness. Evasion has been relegated to the marginal romantic moments and, of course, to the moment in which the inspector solves the case and justice prevails. Italian mysteries abound with realistic descriptions, often,--as we see in the coften,--ase of De Cataldo and Carofiglio, -- of first hand accounts of intricate legal questions or of some kind of injustice that has triggered a crime. It’s for this mixture of realism and utopia that Italian mysteries appeal to such a wide range of readers.
Another reason is that many foreign writers, since the 1980s have set their crime stories in Italy. Although foreigners like Donna Leon, Magdalen Nabb, Michael Dibdin, Timothy Holme, Grace Brophy, Iain Pears, Edward Sklepowich, Marshall Browne, have brought a new perspective in their novels making Italians see how they appear, they also continue to propose old Italian stereotypes. In any case, cultural confrontation is one of the mainsprings of progress and, sometimes, only a “foreigner or a stranger” “sees” and can suggest the actual development of certain events.
For instance, one of the most horrifying public crimes was the strage at the train station of Bologna that took place on August 2nd, 1980. 85 people were killed and 200 were
wounded. Although Fascist terrorist have been convicted and are already free, the strage has remained a mystery. Lucarelli has patiently reconstructed the events, the Associazione delle vittime della strage has collected all the documentary evidence possible. Italian writers didn’t even attempt to write about the strage in their fictions: perhaps it was too painful or too risky. As far as I know only foreigners have dealt with the strage.
The Irish writer, William Trevor, evokes the terrorist attack in Bologna in his novel My House in Umbria, where a group of survivors are made to interact and are psychologically scrutinized. The strage looms in the background, but it is never discussed in its political dimension.
The only writer who has been able to report the event as if he had lived through it is the American Robert Hellenga in The Fall of a Sparrow, a novel with multiple plots, through which the protagonist Woody, who has gone to Bologna to recognize his dead daughter’s body, suggests what can be the only possible solution: a just penalty for the terrorists (life imprisonment) and forgiveness, but not forgetfulness.
But I do not want to stray. In conclusion I’d like to point out that all the Italian mystery writers claim to have been influenced in their techniques by the great American crime writers of the 1930’s, ‘40’s and 50’s, James Hadley Chase ( No Orchids for Miss Blandish, 1929), Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep,1939), Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon,1930), Ellery Queen (Mystery Magazine, from 1941), Mickey Spillane (The Big Kill, 1951) by the film versions of the novels, by the movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock, by the French noir, especially Georges Simenon and yet, at least for Camilleri, Leonardo Sciascia (Il giorno della civetta, 1963, Todo modo, 1974), and Carlo Emilio Gadda (Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana, 1957)seem to have been very inspiring . But the murky contents, the blood curdling stories, the allure of the historical cities, the savoury food, the attractive lifestyle, the beauty of the settings are typically Italian. Camilleri lovingly describes the sea washed shores of Vigata; Lucarelli guides us through an enchanted Bologna.
But, as one poet said: “beauty is difficult” and, Byron, quoting the 17th century poet
Vincenzo Filicaia, exclaimed: “Italia! O Italia! Thou/Who hast the fatal gift of beauty/ (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,Book IV, stanza 42), and Shelley agreed seeing it as the “Paradise of exiles” (Julian and Maddalo, v. 57), but this was the past.
Like Michelangelo’s Pietà, a perfect white marble sculpture, that was vandalized, Italy, is vandalized by crime. Is this what these mystery writers are trying to tell us? Let’s face the problem on the page before it turns into a new barbaric attack. Or, are they so cynical to think that crime in this old social context can be stimulating? As Orson Wells observed about Italy: “they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.”8
Certainly Italian mysteries map out the turmoil that is troubling not only Italy but most countries nowadays as they try to face the question of “il male”, evil, yet, like modern fairy tales, they offer only temporary solutions that just the same are necessary because
8 Orson Wells, Speech written into the Third Man (screenplay by Graham Green and Carol Reed, 1949) The speech
continue: “In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock”.
they do make the reader feel safer and they do inject the belief that crime can still be vanquished.
