Farewell to Andrea Camilleri, writer, father of Inspector Montalbano

Writer Andrea Camilleri passed away this morning in Rome at the age of 93. Born in Porto Empedocle (Agrigento) on Sept. 6, 1925, after beginning work as a theater director, he enrolled in 1944 in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Palermo, but did not graduate. He went on to the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome in 1949, finishing in 1952: from then on he devoted himself mainly to theater directing, but without neglecting his passion for short stories and poetry. After working in RAI production for several years, he began his own activity as a writer in 1978, publishing his debut novel, Il corso delle cose. The first novel published with the Sicilian Sellerio, Camilleri’s historic publisher, was La strage dimenticata, released in 1984.

Instead, the first novel starring Commissario Salvo Montalbano, his most successful character, was published in 1994: it is entitled La forma dell’acqua and is the first in a long series, published entirely by Sellerio. There will be a total of twenty-seven novels featuring him, including such successful titles as La gita a Tindari (2000) or La vampa d’agosto (2006). The latest in the series is The Alcyon Cook (2019). From the novels, the highly successful Rai TV series was adapted, starring Luca Zingaretti as the famous commissario. For his merits, Camilleri was awarded the honor of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2003, and in 2005 he received an honorary degree in Communication Systems and Projects from the University of Pisa.

Camilleri had also written a series of novels dedicated to great artists: Il colore del sole, about the life of Caravaggio (Mondadori, 2007), La vucciria, dedicated to Guttuso (Skira, 2008) and Il cielo rubato, a novel about Renoir (Skira, 2009).

Farewell to Andrea Camilleri, writer, father of Inspector Montalbano

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