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From The Times
April 17, 2008

The 50 Greatest Crime Writers, No 43: Andrea Camilleri

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In a dozen years, the Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri has gone from a relatively unknown TV and film producer to the most successful author in Italy thanks to the creation of Inspector Montalbano. To honour him - and to attract the tourists - his home town has changed its name to the one he'd made up as the setting for his novels. Named in homage to the Catalan writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the Italian cop is a seafood-loving gastronome who swims in the sea when he needs to think and who can manage his girlfriend only because she lives at the other end of the country. The crimes Montalbano investigates are contemporary - drugs, people-trafficking, corruption - but Camilleri's characters wrestle with the sempiternal problems of humanity. His novels are translated by the American poet Stephen Sartelli.

One to read: The Terra-Cotta Dog (2002)

Andrea Camilleri on Italy’s American baggage, New York Times

The 50 Greatest Crime Writers

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