Sunday, February 16, 2014

Crime Writer Andrea Camilleri, 88, Wins Award, Takes On Imbeciles


Hector Tobar at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on Andrea Camilleri, author of The Age of Doubt.

The Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri accepted the prestigious Pepe Carvalho prize for lifetime work at the BCNegra noir literary festival in Barcelona last week. And he made it clear that, at 88, he’s still got a lot of crime writing left in him

Camilleri was born and raised in Sicily and writes in a mixture of Italian and Sicilian. His novels are populated with a host of characters and settings, including corrupt politicians, illegal trash dumps, goat herders, the underground sex trade and, of course, the Mafia. Camilleri’s alter ego is Inspector Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of more than a dozen novels published in English by Picador and Mantle.

The fictional Montalbano also lives in Sicily. Born in 1950, the fictional Montalbano is getting on in years too. And, like his creator Camilleri, he has no plans of retiring.

“He feels older than he is because he’s spent his whole life surrounded by imbeciles,” Camilleri told the Madrid newspaperABC. “That’s what 90% of criminals are, and if you live surrounded by imbeciles, life isn’t very nice, but he’s terrified of retirement. What will he do? Walk the dog?”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-crime-writer-andrea-camilleri-88-award-imbeciles-20140211,0,2457282.story#axzz2tVoiaIcD 

4 comments:

  1. Great writer! Great books! So much better than the pseudo-Italian, Donna Leon. I think I will begin reading all of them again, beginning with his first -- The Shape of the Water.

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  2. I look forward to reading his latest, "The Age of Doubt."

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  3. I guess my understanding of "his latest" is different. See here: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/andrea-camilleri/

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  4. Tobar in the LA Times piece wrote, "Reviewing Camilleri's most recent novel, "The Age of Doubt," the Daily Telegraph wrote of the fictional Montalbano...."

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