, one of Italy’s most popular authors and creator of the popular Inspector Montalbano series, died on 17 July 2019 at the age of 93.
Born in Porto Empedocle, in the province of Agrigento, on 6 September 1925, Camilleri worked as a poet, then as a theatre director and screenwriter/director for Italian state broadcaster RAI.
In 1994, at the age of almost 70, he wrote The Shape of Water, the first book starring his now-famous Sicilian detective, Inspector Montalbano.
The Montalbano series now runs to more than two dozen books and has been translated into 32 languages, with more than 30 million copies sold.
In an interview with SBS Italian in 2008, Camilleri admitted he actually wrote the finale for Montalbano years earlier.
"I happened to write it almost four years ago, which is when it occurred to me how to end Montalbano," he said in 2008. "I am an orderly man and being 80 years old, then, I have no desire of leaving things half done.
"And so for fear that Alzheimer may catch me by surprise, I wrote this novel, the end of Montalbano, and I sent it to the publisher... I told him, 'Look, this is the last Montalbano [book], leave it there, in a drawer. The moment I won't feel like writing Montalbano anymore or I'll get bored, I will tell you: 'publish that last novel'."
"It's a bet with old age, for now, I'm winning, but let's see," he said.
Andrea Camilleri at the Photocall of the film The disappearance of Pato. (AAP Image/Maurizio D’Avanzo/IPA) Source: AAP Image/Camilla Morandi/IPA
"My first impression of Zingaretti was 'this is not my character!'"
In the same interview in 2008, Mr Camilleri said he was not initially convinced by the director's choice of Luca Zingaretti to play Inspector Montalbano.
"The first impression [of Luca Zingaretti] was, 'But it is not my character! First of all, because he is bald, while my character has lots of hair. Second, he's too young.'"
But knowing his acting talent, Mr Camilleri saw that Mr Zingaretti could pull it off.
"A good actor is someone who makes you believe for two hours that he's the best Hamlet, even if he's 40 and he has a potbelly," Mr Camilleri said.
"Luca doesn't have the physique I would have expected for the role, but he is an extraordinary actor, and so he's believable - he is a perfect Montalbano."
Speaking to SBS Italian in 2014, Luca Zingaretti admitted that when he was selected to play Inspector Montalbano, he felt many people doubted the choice.
“I remember when I won the part after six months of auditions, I returned home all happy and called some friends and everyone said, 'Don't you dare do it because you'll spoil the character.' They imagined him [Inspector Montalbano] completely different."
Inspector Montalbano is one of the most famous Italian series in Australia. (SBS On Demand) Source: SBS
How Camilleri started to write
In 2015, Andrea Camilleri shared with us the story of him becoming a writer.
"I started writing poems and short stories which got published on some of the main Italian newspapers, and even Ungaretti put me in his anthology of promising young poets.
"Then I became interested in theatre, as a director and then the theatre took my hand and I didn't write anymore (...)," Mr Camilleri said. "In '67 I started writing again, and I wrote my first novel, which I finished in 1968.
"That book was like a cork from a bottle. I took off that cork one year later and published another one with Garzanti, A Thread of Smoke, and since then I have never stopped."
The name of 'Montalbano'
Set in the fictional town of Vigata, Mr Camilleri was originally going to call his detective novel 'The Commissioner' but decided to pay tribute to Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a Spanish author who wrote about investigator Pepe Carvalho.
"In those days I had finished writing Preston's Brewer, which is a historical novel, and I had written it in such a way that it seemed very boring to me," Mr Camilleri said.
"However, reading a book by Vázquez Montalbán, The Pianist, gave me an idea of how to restructure the book... And then, out of gratitude, I called the main character of my first detective novel Montalbano, which is a very common name in Sicily."
The fictional town of Vigata where Inspector Montalbano takes place is based on Mr Camilleri’s home town of Porto Empedocle.
Salvo Montalbano dining. Source: RAI
The town was so proud of this connection that it officially changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigata in 2003.
"I hope my Montalbano reminds distant Sicilians of a beautiful and well-designed Sicily in their memory, and refreshes it, that memory," he said.
"I have no regrets, if I have to do a summary I would do everything I did, and I have neither regrets nor remorse. I had a fortunate life because I always earned my bread by doing what I liked to do."
Luca Zingaretti: 'In the end, you caught me off guard and left us'
Among the first to pay tribute to Mr Camilleri was Mr Zingaretti himself.
“In the end, you caught me off guard and left us,” he wrote in an emotional post on Instagram.
“Despite the increasingly tragic news, I hoped until the last that you would open your eyes and address us with one of your sentences, for all to listen to and conserve. You have now departed and left me with an emptiness that can’t be filled. But I know that each time I say, even alone, in my head, that ‘I am Montalbano!’ then you will have left smiling, perhaps smoking a cigarette and winking at me, as a sign of understanding, like the last time we met in Siracusa. Farewell maestro and friend. Rest in peace.”
