Repubblica presents Camilleri's stories

This year, Andrea Camilleri would have turned 100 , and Repubblica has decided to celebrate with a special gift: starting tomorrow, free copies of Le storie di Vigàta , a series of short stories set in Sicily , will be available at newsstands. These small masterpieces draw on literary echoes, traces of the past, current events, and the author's life, and are part of his vast literary output, representing his most intimate and free side .

Camilleri , universally known for his Inspector Montalbano , captured the contradictions of post-World War II Italy through a style that combined popularity and quality, while never losing sight of the world and its realities. The six stories in Vigàta , selected among the most significant, reveal the distinctive features of his style, blending humor and social commentary, adventure and mystery, and a profound passion for storytelling.

The first appointment is tomorrow, August 9th with The Proof , a comedy of errors that features betrayal and jealousy, with the reserved Lollo who, in order to prove his chastity to his fiancée, ends up doing the exact opposite.

On Sunday, August 17th , L'uomo è forte (The Man is Strong) will be released, the tragicomic parable of Tano Cumbo, a worker who suddenly finds himself unemployed and, after vain attempts at revenge, finds himself relying solely on his wife. On August 23rd, it's the turn of the surreal story I quattro natali di Tridicino (The Four Christmases of Tridicino) , in which Camilleri, with a fairytale and ironic tone, tells us about a courageous young fisherman who celebrates Christmas four times. The following week, Saturday, August 30th, the story La guerra privata di Samuele , detto Leli ( The Private War of Samuele , known as Leli), will be released, focusing on the growth of a "picciotto" grappling with war, fears, and daily struggles. On Saturday, September 6th - the centenary of the writer's birth - and Sunday, September 7th, the last two volumes will be delivered as a gift: The license plate , a story about a mysterious accident and Michele Sparacino's triple life tells the story of a seemingly ordinary man who must manage a castle of lies that threatens to collapse on him.

In these tales, the storyteller Camilleri proceeds through short narratives, and the plot often gives way to the characters' inspiration, personality, and obsessions, to the details and reflections on life that become the true heart of the story. Language is the primary protagonist: the famous "Vigatese," an invented blend of Italian and Sicilian, becomes a living substance that engages the reader and projects them into a very specific elsewhere, following the tradition of Verga, Pirandello, Brancati, and Sciascia. It is precisely this new idiom that, with words like acchiana, furgarone, abbachiato, calatina, and travagghiari , creates a powerful narrative code that forces the reader to slow down and tune into the frequency of Vigàta .

The setting, which is said to be, albeit filtered, Porto Empedocle where the Maestro grew up, is never a nostalgic postcard: it is a place where reality is not mystified, where beauty and misery, mafia and redemption coexist, a ferocious world told without indulgence .

These stories by Camilleri always have to do with Evil , how men overcome it or are overwhelmed by it, but they also remind us that alternatives persist : friendship, honesty, commitment, a sense of justice, humanity, love.

Camilleri , who liked to call himself "an old communist," was a great storyteller, but above all a very serious Sicilian , so much so that his disciplined writing led him to publish 110 books, selling a total of 30 million copies , and his Montalbano was translated into over forty languages. Of course, the popular appeal of television helped, but one thing remains: like an ancient wandering bard , he brought literature even into the homes of those who had never read a book.

"I'm a storyteller, I've never been anything else. If I could, I'd like to finish my career sitting in a square telling stories, and at the end of my tale, walk through the audience with a flat cap in hand," Camilleri confessed in one of his last interviews. And that's exactly how we want to imagine him, sitting in an ideal square with his cigarettes and a glass of whiskey, surrounded by readers old and new , his books in their hands and the desire to hear a story, once again.