Post by account_disabled on Dec 26, 2023 1:51:45 GMT -5
The first time I encountered Andrea Camilleri's writing was when my mother was given one of his novels for Christmas. At that time I had begun to hear about this writer and so I leafed through some pages of that book. The surprise was almost tragic. It was written in Sicilian dialect and I understood almost nothing. So I decided that I would never read that author, an author I couldn't understand. Years later, leafing through a Catalog of the Publishers' Club, I found two novels by Camilleri on offer: The Snack Thief and The Terracotta Dog , a handful of euros in total. So I decided to take them. At most I would have wasted little money if I didn't like them. I read them. I now have 30 books by Camilleri, for a total of 34 works including novels, essays and collections of short stories.
And I've read almost everything I have. To tell the truth, I immediately got used to his dialect writing. She seemed sincere to me. True. Original. Like a narrator who was sitting right in front of me, an old Sicilian with a cigar in his mouth who decided to tell me a story. It's a colorful style. Who doesn't care about any appearance, frank and therefore more Special Data credible. It has a humorous streak that makes the stories more enjoyable to read. But between the lines we perceive the drama of a land that has suffered and is suffering. The drama of people and life. Andrea Camilleri's stories could not have been written in any other way. Presented to the public in perfect Italian they would have lost much of their pathos . All those babbiare , cabasisi , arrisbigliare , macari , 'nzemmula , trasire and other picturesque expressions that the author introduced us to would have been killed by a precise translation into current language.
Camilleri's Sicilian is understandable. Just read it and the rest follows. After a few pages that becomes our language, Sicily our region and those people exactly the ones we meet on the street. I was lucky enough to interview Andrea Camilleri a few years ago. It was truly a stroke of luck, in my opinion. I looked for his site online. A Camilleri site, it must be said, exists, but perhaps Camilleri doesn't even know it. This is good. Four pages just to make up the numbers. I immediately understood that I would never reach the author from that site. It was created by Mondadori, which created a series of identical sites dedicated to the same number of writers it publishes. Then I remembered the Camilleri Fans' Association , for which I designed the logo years before. They were the ones who celebrated the Maestro's 80th birthday. So I wrote to him, got the secretary's email and a week later the interview.
And I've read almost everything I have. To tell the truth, I immediately got used to his dialect writing. She seemed sincere to me. True. Original. Like a narrator who was sitting right in front of me, an old Sicilian with a cigar in his mouth who decided to tell me a story. It's a colorful style. Who doesn't care about any appearance, frank and therefore more Special Data credible. It has a humorous streak that makes the stories more enjoyable to read. But between the lines we perceive the drama of a land that has suffered and is suffering. The drama of people and life. Andrea Camilleri's stories could not have been written in any other way. Presented to the public in perfect Italian they would have lost much of their pathos . All those babbiare , cabasisi , arrisbigliare , macari , 'nzemmula , trasire and other picturesque expressions that the author introduced us to would have been killed by a precise translation into current language.
Camilleri's Sicilian is understandable. Just read it and the rest follows. After a few pages that becomes our language, Sicily our region and those people exactly the ones we meet on the street. I was lucky enough to interview Andrea Camilleri a few years ago. It was truly a stroke of luck, in my opinion. I looked for his site online. A Camilleri site, it must be said, exists, but perhaps Camilleri doesn't even know it. This is good. Four pages just to make up the numbers. I immediately understood that I would never reach the author from that site. It was created by Mondadori, which created a series of identical sites dedicated to the same number of writers it publishes. Then I remembered the Camilleri Fans' Association , for which I designed the logo years before. They were the ones who celebrated the Maestro's 80th birthday. So I wrote to him, got the secretary's email and a week later the interview.