Then one of the asked, ‘But if he’s still alive, aren’t you worried that, after you die, another writer might bring him back and continue his stories?’” said Sartarelli. “When asked how he brought it all to a close, he merely said that he didn’t want to kill his character, as others had done, and so he had him simply ‘go away’. The author, who was generally reticent about the final novel, admitted he’d written it so that it wouldn’t remain unfinished if he were to suddenly die. Sartarelli recalled a trip to Rome to see Camilleri, along with a group of British booksellers, in around 2008. Like all authors he wanted to remain in charge.”
I think he just thought, ‘Montalbano is me, and I too am going to dissolve out of life’, so I think the ending is just pitch perfect. But he doesn’t preach at you, he doesn’t stand on his soapbox. He had total rage against the corruption in Sicilian and Italian society, and he channelled that into the great warmth of Montalbano. When he wrote the first one, he didn’t see it as a series, but then, because he got such warmth from readers, he thought ‘maybe I can use Montalbano as a vehicle’.
I no longer remembered the story, which I found good and unfortunately still relevant.”Ĭamilleri, who dedicated the novel to his late publisher Elvira Sellerio, said he changed nothing in the plot, but “did find it necessary to bring the language up to date”.Ĭamilleri’s British editor Maria Rejt, at Mantle, said: “It’s typical Andrea – he decided he had an idea of how to end the series and how to write Montalbano out of fiction. As I was listening, I became surprised at my own words. “I’ve lost my eyesight and therefore had no choice but to ask my friend Valentina to read it to me aloud. “After turning 91 and feeling surprised at still being alive and still wanting to keep writing, I thought it might be a good idea to ‘adjust’ the story of Riccardino,” he adds.
I regret this, but at 80 years of age, one cannot avoid the fact that many, too many, things must come to an end.”Įleven years later, in November 2016, he revisited the unpublished work. In an author’s note written in 2005 and included with the book, Camilleri wrote: “This is the final novel with Inspector Montalbano as its protagonist. This mystery is a big hodgepodge that reads like it was written by a beginner.’” You are putting far too many contradictory elements into play and keeping them all on the same level, so that the reader gets lost in the confusion. “‘Do you really mean that?’ ‘I really mean it. It’s a pile of horseshit that doesn’t hold together,” the Author tells Montalbano. “You’re making me write a shitty novel about the story of Riccardino. Metafictional and fourth-wall-breaking, it features interventions from “the Author” as Montalbano puzzles his way to the solution, with Camilleri clearly having a great deal of fun along the way. The English-language edition was translated by Stephen Sartarelli, and sees the Inspector investigating the murder in broad daylight of a man called Riccardino who had called him that morning. In that last book, he’s really finished,” he told the Guardian in 2012.Ĭamilleri died in 2019, and Riccardino, the 28th and final novel in the Montalbano series, was published in Italy in 2020. “Sherlock Holmes was recovered … but it will not be possible to recover Montalbano.
Camilleri wrote the first book about Salvo Montalbano in 1994 at the age of almost 70 he began writing the 28th in 2004, depositing the manuscript at his publishing house in Palermo on the promise that it would be kept in a locked safe and only published after his death. The series, following the food-loving Sicilian detective as he solves crimes against the backdrop of a changing Italy, has been translated into 32 languages, with more than 65m copies sold around the world. The final novel in Andrea Camilleri’s beloved Inspector Montalbano mystery series is was published on Thursday – but the late author actually completed it five years ago, to prevent his detective’s story being continued after his death.