Today’s guest
blog is by Barbara Pezzotti, PhD, an Honorary Research Associate of the
Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS). She has published a number of
articles and book chapters on Italian crime fiction, and the figure of the
detective and the serial killer in New Zealand crime fiction. She is the author
of Politics and Society in Italian Crime
Fiction. An Historical Overview (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), and The
Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction. A Bloody Journey (Madison,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2102). She has also published
an e-book in Italian entitled I luoghi del delitto. Una mappa del giallo
italiano contemporaneo (Florence: goWare, 2014). She is co-editor (with
Jean Anderson and Carolina Miranda) of The Foreign in International
Crime Fiction. Transcultural Representations (Continuum, 2012). She is
currently working on a monograph on historical crime fiction provisionally
entitled Murder in the Ages of Chaos:
Italy’s Past in Historical Crime Fiction and Films. She lives in New
Zealand with her husband Martin and her cat Garibaldi. She is a
blogger for The Australasian Centre for Italian Studies.
I am glad that my new book
“Politics and Society in Italian Crime
Fiction. An Historical Overview” is finally out. This marks the end of a
long story that started many years ago when I resigned from my job in Italy and
moved to New Zealand to marry a nice kiwi bloke, Martin. Having a lot of time
up to my sleeve, I decided to go for a PhD in literature. I was then told that my
university years would be very challenging and I had to choose a topic I really
liked if I wanted to keep my sanity. At that time, feeling nostalgic about my
hometown, I was reading crime fiction set in Milan. I thought, why not? I did
some research and I realised that in spite of being a very popular genre in
Italy and notwithstanding the fact that some Italian crime fiction writers,
such as Andrea Camilleri and Massimo Carlotto were very famous internationally,
very little study had been done on Italian crime fiction. I jumped at the
chance. The topic of my dissertation was the representation of city and
regional identities in Italian crime fiction or giallo (yellow, from the traditional book cover for crime fiction
in Italy) as we call it in Italian. I thoroughly enjoyed my postgrad years: I
read tons of crime books, wrote about them, discussed them with a small bunch
of academics who were doing similar research in different parts of the globe, and
participated in crime fiction conferences. I also managed not to go nuts; at
least I think I did. At the end of my PhD studies, my thesis was finally
published in 2012 under the title of The
Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction. A Bloody Journey.
During the work on my
thesis and then on my manuscript, I became increasingly intrigued by the way
the giallo had been used for
political reasons. I also noticed that a history of Italian crime fiction in
English did not exist. I therefore decided to explore this topic further,
embracing a wide temporal frame, from the end of the nineteenth to the
twenty-first century. I was lucky enough to convince a publishing house,
McFarland, that my project was worth pursuing and I started working on it at
the beginning of 2011. I re-read some contemporary novels and classics, and I
read old gialli (giallo in the plural) for the first time, discovering a new,
exciting world of fiction. Through the analysis of writers belonging to
different and crucial periods of Italian history, my ambition was to explore
the different ways in which individual authors exploited the structure of crime
fiction to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of Italy of
their times. By investigating in particular the works of seven writers (Augusto
De Angelis, Giorgio Scerbanenco, Leonardo Sciascia, Loriano Macchiavelli,
Andrea Camilleri, Massimo Carlotto, and Marcello Fois) in the social and
political context in which they were written, my book has ended up becoming an
investigation into Italy’s recent history, too.
My “time travel” with
Italian crime fiction highlights a characteristic that the giallo shares with many other Southern European, Latin American and
Scandinavian crime novels: this genre has become a militant vehicle for social
and political commentary. Important political and social themes have been
present since the beginning of the genre in Italy: not only the hard-boiled
formula, but also the traditionally reassuring whodunit in Italy shows a close
relationship with Italy’s political and social environment. Among the issues
tackled by the giallo are: pollution
and a progressive and merciless industrialization of the countryside;
consumerism and loneliness in the urban environment; criminal organisations;
the North and South divide; a clash between regional and national identities,
for example local dialects versus Italian; political instability and corruption
and unresolved questions of democracy, freedom, and illegality.
It can be fun, it can be
exciting, and it can be scary, but there is little comforting in reading most Italian
crime fiction. It’s not an exercise for the faint-hearted, or for people who
like to indulge in a postcard image of the country. Forget Venice and the
gondolas, the Renaissance art and romance: the giallo is for tough guys and girls who like to be challenged and
turn the last page of a book feeling a mix of emotion, uneasiness, and a desire
to change the status quo.
-------
Politics and Society in Italian Crime Fiction
This book comprehensively covers the history of Italian
crime fiction from its origins to the present.
Using the concept of "moral rebellion”, the author examines the
ways in which Italian crime fiction has articulated the country’s social and
political changes. The book concentrates
on such writers as Augusto de Angelis (1888-1944), Giorgio Scerbanenco
(1911-1969), Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), Andrea Camilleri (b. 1925), Loriano
Macchiavelli (b. 1934), Massimo Carlotto (b. 1956), and Marcello Fois (b.
1960). Through the analysis of writers
belonging to differing crucial periods of Italy’s history, this work reveals
the many ways in which authors exploit the genre to reflect social
transformation and dysfunction.
The Bastards
of Pizzofalcone
is a new series of hardboiled crime fiction set in contemporary Naples by Maurizio
de Giovanni the author of the internationally bestselling Commissario Ricciardi
series. They’ve made a fresh start at the Pizzofalcone precinct of Naples. They
fired every member of the investigative branch after they were found guilty of
corruption. Now, there’s a new group of detectives, a new commissario, and a
new superintendent. The new cops
immediately find themselves investigating a high-profile murder that has the
whole town on edge. Heading the investigation is Inspector Lojacono, known as
the Chinaman, a cop with a chequered past and a reputation as crack
investigator. Lojacono’s partner is Aragona, who wants to be known as Serpico,
but the name doesn’t stick. Luigi Palma is the Commissario, Francesco Romano,
aka Hulk, the self-deluded lieutenant. Lojacono, Aragona, Palma and Romano are
joined by a cast of cops portrayed by de Giovanni with depth and intimate
knowledge of the close-knit world of police investigators.
