Catania, at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily, does not aspire to be the cleanest city in Italy. In fact, the rest of Italy is bringing the Catalans to the heights. They measure themselves against no one, not even Palermo, who despises them because Catania has the passion and the capital, the secrets; when it is known that in occult and criminal societies – in the Mafia, in short – both are equally effective. What Palermo does not have and Catania does have is the volcano, always active even though it did not cause destruction centuries ago, since 1600. The people of Catania love their volcano, the ‘Mintagna’ which, they say, has never killed anyone although from time to time it emits a characteristic blackish and gray ash that covers everything, disguises the impressive baroque buildings and destroys the vacuum cleaners.
It is in this scenario where the author Cristina Cassar Scalia has her investigator, Vanina Garrasi, deputy commissioner of the city’s judicial police, actwho built a reputation for himself in the fight against the mafia, where he unfortunately witnessed the death of his father, also a policeman.
‘Negro Arena (Duomo)alluding to the one ejected by the volcano, is the first of five novels by the author, an ophthalmologist working in Catania of whom not all his patients know his dual health and literary she. And the comparisons did not last long. She is therefore considered “the heiress of Camilleri”, or the “Sicilian Giménez Bartlett”, something she does not like, although she thinks her fundamental references are Georges Simenon and Leonardo Sciascia. There is something of the social intentions of the teacher of Racalmuto in this story that tells of the appearance of a mummified corpse in a half-ruined house that had worked as the most popular and luxurious brothel in the city 60 years before. “I did not really want to write a crime novel, but my initial idea included a corpse and the image of an old royal house that some friends inherited, a slightly disturbing building. This led me to create an investigator that I built like the police I would like to find in a book & rdquor ;, the author explains one foggy morning in January on a terrace overlooking the ash-like Catania -cathedral.
Old movies and curious gastronomy
Little is what the author gave her creature: like Cassar Scalia, Vanina also likes many of the old Italian films by Monicelli, Scola or Antonioni, the ones that glorified ‘Cinema Paradiso’. “In addition, I let him eat everything I want to eat and I am forced to suppress myself & rdquor ;. And it is that gastronomy, so important to the people of Catania – who do things as strange as dipping brioches in ‘granita’, a typical ice drink from the area -, is as tangible here as in the novels of Simenon or Camilleri .
As it is about the light of a past that is both brilliant and filthy, the sand of the title serves the author to express an effective symbol: “I needed two eruptions, one that in 1959 caused the crime remains hidden and another in the news that reactivates what was hidden under the ashes & rdquor ;. Of course, to write from Sicily means to face the eternal dilemma or to put the actions of the Mafia and its derivatives in the foreground. Although the crimes of Deputy Commissioner Garrasi, at least in this first episode, are common, its creator is very clear that no crime novel can be made without her in mind. “The opposite is to distort reality and that is something I want to take care of. The proof is that many police officers read Vanina’s novels, something I really appreciate & rdquor ;.
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The power of the Mafia, the eternal protagonist of Sicily, although its violent actions now do not appear to be as prominent as in the 1990s – when Vanina’s father died in an attack – is explained by Cassar Scalia by the historical power vacuum of the Italian state regarding the island. “When people do not feel protected, they look for alternative powers and that is where the Mafia is born, from the perception that they have been abandoned, that they need protection. The danger is that you can get it all, but the cost is very high because the rules of the Cosa Nostra are dangerous and violent.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com