It's never too late
The always valuable Euro Crime news site links to the Independent's recent interview with Andrea Camilleri, author of seven novels to date about the Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano.
The interview opens with a discussion of a memorable Montalbano outburst in The Scent of the Night, the sixth of the seven books. Later, Camilleri reveals that Montalbano is based to a great extent on his own father. He discusses his attitudes toward the Sicialian language, and he shares some perhaps surprising ideas about the role of the Mafia in his novels.
But what really caught my eye is something that ought to encourage any crime-fiction readers who are also would-be crime-fiction writers: Montalbano was 70 years old when he published his first Montalbano book.
(Camilleri/Montalbano central in the blogosphere these days is Crime Scraps. Norm/Uriah, the curator of Crime Scraps, is a Montalbano nut.)
© Peter Rozovsky 2007
Technorati tags:
Andrea Camilleri
Salvo Montalbano
Crime fiction, Italy
Crime fiction, Sicily
The interview opens with a discussion of a memorable Montalbano outburst in The Scent of the Night, the sixth of the seven books. Later, Camilleri reveals that Montalbano is based to a great extent on his own father. He discusses his attitudes toward the Sicialian language, and he shares some perhaps surprising ideas about the role of the Mafia in his novels.
But what really caught my eye is something that ought to encourage any crime-fiction readers who are also would-be crime-fiction writers: Montalbano was 70 years old when he published his first Montalbano book.
(Camilleri/Montalbano central in the blogosphere these days is Crime Scraps. Norm/Uriah, the curator of Crime Scraps, is a Montalbano nut.)
© Peter Rozovsky 2007
Technorati tags:
Andrea Camilleri
Salvo Montalbano
Crime fiction, Italy
Crime fiction, Sicily
Labels: Andrea Camilleri, Italy, Salvo Montalbano, Sicily
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 2:09 AM
4 Comments:
Thank you, Peter.
Montalbano nut indeed, but I plead guilty. Luckily for me my wife is an excellent fish chef so I can live my Montalbano fantasy.
I have almost finished Rounding the Mark[review available soon] and have The Scent of the Night sitting on my untidy desk patiently waiting for my attention.
I didn't know that about your wife's cooking. You are living out what one blogger has already offered as practical advice for healthy living: http://librosdedetectives.blogspot.com/2006/11/cocina-fcil-con-salvo-montalbano.html#links
Yes I managed to lose 13 kg in 4 months but recently it has been coming back on. The stormy weather has forcibly reduced my reliance on fish. I don't blame the trawlermen not wanting to fish in the gales we have had recently.
We have frozen fish; why not frozen fishermen?
In any case, I should have been more precise. The link that I gave specifies not that Montalbano can lead to healthy eating, but that he can add color and variety to menus. I was using healthy in the Mediterranean joie de vivre sense, not the constricted, masochistic, self-lacerating, puritanical, pleasure-denying American one.
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