Andrea Camilleri: Italian writer who found worldwide success late in life with Inspector Montalbano

His Sicilian detective captured the imagination of millions and also reflected the writer’s jaded views on his country’s politics

The author went on to sell 10 million books worldwide (Getty)

In a world that endlessly celebrates the young and the new, the life of Andrea Camilleri provides comfort for late bloomers. The Italian writer, who has died aged 93, was already in retirement when he wrote La forma dell’acqua (The Shape of Water), which introduced irascible Sicilian detective Salvo Montalbano to the bestseller lists.

Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle on Sicily’s south coast to Giuseppe Camilleri and Carmelina Fragapane. His father, an inspector of ports, was a follower of Mussolini and joined the fascist dictator’s march on Rome.

Camilleri was an only child. He was expelled from his church school for throwing an egg at the cross. After that, he studied in Agrigento but had to leave without sitting his final exams due to the impending arrival of the allied forces at the height of the Second World War. His later attempts to complete his education were also stymied. Though he enrolled at the University of Palermo, he didn’t finish his degree. However, by 1945 he was already a published writer, having been included in a poetry anthology.

After the end of the war, Camilleri joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), as did many of his peers. He moved to Rome and studied directing at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica (the Academy of Dramatic Arts). He was a fan of the theatre of the absurd and is credited with introducing his fellow Italians to the plays of Samuel Beckett. He also revered the work of the dramatist Pirandello, who was, at that time, Porto Empedocle’s most famous son.

In 1957 Camilleri married Rosetta Dello Siesto, and they would go on to have three daughters: Andreina, Elisabetta and Mariolina. Camilleri then joined the recently formed television department of RAI, Italy’s state broadcasting corporation. While at RAI, he would produce a number of detective series, including Le inchieste del commissario Maigret (Commissioner Maigret’s Inquiries), based on Georges Simenon’s fictional French detective.

After almost 20 years at RAI, Camilleri returned to the Academy of Dramatic Arts as head of film direction. While there, he wrote his first two novels, publishing Il Corso Delle Cose (The Way Things Go) in 1978 and Un Filo di Fumo (A Thread of Smoke) in 1980. The books were not huge commercial successes and though Camilleri continued to write, he found it difficult to find a publisher again, in part because of his idiosyncratic style, which combined standard Italian with Sicilian dialect. However, everything changed in 1992 with the publication of La Stagione della Caccia (Hunting Season), which became a bestseller. Two years later came Montalbano’s debut in La forma dell’acqua.

Montalbano was partly inspired by Camilleri’s father but he was named in homage to the Spanish writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban. Montalban’s own fictional detective Pepe Carvalho perhaps also inspired Camilleri’s decision to make his Montalbano a keen gourmet cook. Vigata, Montalbano’s fictional home town, was based on Porto Empedocle. Meanwhile, Camilleri’s plots drew inspiration from sources as diverse as local newspapers and the work of his beloved Pirandello.

Though his books were set firmly in Sicily, Camilleri deliberately avoided any mention of the mafia by name. Camilleri was frustrated by Hollywood’s glamorisation of organised crime and wanted to present a more realistic picture. He told the BBC’s Mark Lawson in 2012 that he did not fear upsetting any real gangsters, saying: “The mafia’s cultural attention extends to newspapers and TV – they are not interested in fiction … the mafia kills journalists and not novelists.”

Camilleri also used Montalbano as a mouthpiece for his jaded views on the church’s influence on Italian life and to express his disdain for Silvio Berlusconi and his conservative governments. Camilleri was proud to have been a signatory of the philosopher Norberto Bobbio’s manifesto imploring the Italian electorate not to vote for the media mogul turned politician. He told Lawson in 2012: “My anti-Berlusconism is long-established, and unfortunately we were right. Because the damage Berlusconi did was not always visible during his office, but you can see it now.” Needless to say, Camilleri was disturbed by the rise of Matteo Salvini and the hard-right Northern League.

As well as bringing Camilleri well-deserved late-life success, the Montalbano books changed the fortunes of the small Sicilian publishing company who first published the series. As the detective’s popularity soared with a television adaptation, Porto Empedocle added Vigata to its name to attract Montalbano-crazy tourists. However, Camilleri had mixed feelings about his most famous character, calling him a “serial killer” in reference to the fact that the public’s insatiable appetite for Montalbano kept him from writing anything else. At the same time, Camilleri seems to have enjoyed the public profile Montalbano gave him.

Over the course of his career as a novelist, Camilleri wrote more than 50 books that were translated into more than 30 languages and sold over 10 million copies. The Inspector Montalbano TV series sold all over the world. In 2012 he was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger for The Potter’s Field. Porto Empedocle erected a statue in the writer’s honour, standing opposite that of his hero, Pirandello.

The author whose work was once considered too provincial, with its sprinklings of Sicilian vernacular, captured the international imagination by writing about what he knew best. As Camilleri himself said: “Tell the story of your village. If you tell it well, you will have told the story of the world.”

Camilleri is survived by his wife and their three daughters.

Andrea Camilleri, writer, born 6 September 1925, died 17 July 2019