He promised him and did it. Vins Gallico, the writer Reggio who had invented a very young PM two years ago“A kind of Yogi bear in gray suit” “with clumsy and patient changes”, And he had given him the name of a legendary professor of the Reggio classical high school, Mimmo Castelli: in “The god of the Strait” we had met his first adventure, a reversal of the noir classics, especially of the southern noir full of clichés. Rather, a Magnogreco noir with the taste of Cremareggina, who came after a series of other (beautiful) novels, from «Final Cut. Love does not resist “, with whom Gallico had been in twelfth to the 2015 witch, to” The barrier “, with Fabio Lucaferri, in 2017, dystopia between the south and north of the world.
Now he returns to the shore to the Strait for the brand new “Calabra wave” (Published, like the others, from Fandango): today in Messina (Bonanzinga Library, 6 pm), tomorrow in Castroreale (Mystery Festival), Saturday in Reggio (Circolo Calaco at 6 pm), Sunday at the Cosenza Reading Festival (17.30).
Mimmo Castelli, Reggio and his corners that nobody knows, a survey that brings a lot of far from Calabria, a ending that makes new adventures can imagine. But are you serial?
“It seems to me precisely to say it,” I here I here Mimmo Castelli “, because I just met him in your beautiful novel” With the dark I see it “, among other things, in his role as well as the high school professor. My Mimmo, on the other hand, is a young cattocommunist prosecutor reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s idiot, one who would like to be good at all costs. One that would like to be light at all costs. Unfortunately (or fortunately, eh) every light projects a shadow. And a shadow and a secret compromise and orient Mimmo’s life. Reggio Calabria is filled with light, with its corners that many are telling many. This is also important: try not to make it a stereotyped story, identical to the chronicle mainstream or photocopied on other places in the Mediterranean already abundantly narrated. Because it is true that there is a sisterhood between the cities of the Mediterranean, but it is true that each place exudes its own identity. This time Mimmo will leave in the heart of Germany … then anticipating some investigative tracks that will be obvious in the early 2000s. Calabra wave is a book in itself, but there will be other Mimmo investigations … ».
Because 1997, the year of the death of a symbol of Calabria, Calabria “other”, what does he quote?
«In July ’97 he was killed to Miami Gianni Versace. And in that same date I make the two victims of Calabra wave, Italian migrants in Germany. I do it on the basis of the same principle as Aldo Moro and Peppino Impastato: the execution of the first in fact obscured the murder of the second. So the two boys killed in Germany are almost ignored by public opinion. For me, choosing that period means choosing a moment of hope before Genoa 2001, of digital life. When you could still talk concentrated, without virtual prostheses. A moment of the hour and here, with hope for the future ».
“Onda Calabra” is a beautiful song of the birth of the heavy clouds, which also mixes Calabrian and German, (“Calabra wave in Doichlanda …”), and of which she then made a comic version, or satirical, I never know, Antonio Albanese. Are you talking about “Doichlanda” in the book (and inside your life and other books)?
«My training took place between Calabria, Rome and Germany. I left a German cast in my name, a kind of oral tattoo, not to erase those years. Onda Calabra is a song that speaks of migration, “below in sky that never laughs”, and my book also treats that. Of how a migratory affair can end badly, how difficult it can be. So yes, there is talk of the difficulty of being uprooted, but also of the beauty of meeting other fragments of the world. And then there is an ending with a cameo by Peppe Voltarelli, right in the novel, which makes me laugh a little, a little dancing. Speaking of Doichlanda: the advance of the worst racist right, of the AFD, well, could already be sensed in those 90s … ».
Is Reggio a place of the mind?
«Reggio is an extremely physical place, with its great metaphysical potential. A city of great tradition, born because of an innovation (i.e. the Magnogreche colonies), which experiences flowering and wicked cycles. I would say that however it has never yet become a butterfly. And I say it with regret, but also with a will of redemption, which can only take place through the assumption of remaining place, and not transform into no place: if we become that is all over. If there is no collective care, a will to look at the positive aspects of the past, but above all to the possibilities of the future “.
Yours is a yellow, even classic, but, as already in “the god of the strait”, the border between good and bad is an uncertain line, a gray area. And Mimmo is a bearer (insane, even tormented) of ethics, before justice …
“In” the God of the Strait “I had tried to disassemble the structure of the classic noir, inserting a more philosophical and spiritual part. Here there is less head and more emotion, with a more tense development, more devoted to detection, but more deepening the personal and psychological sphere of all the figures involved. Reflection on ethics, on justice remains and does not have its own solution. The point is always that: how do you behave in front of the evil that is still inevitable? And above all, how do you behave with your inner shadows, your monsters? Mimmo is convinced that he can say he too: “I see it with the dark”, but one account is the darkness outside of us, one account is the one within us … ».