IL NIPOTE DEL NEGUS / THE GRANDSON OF THE NEGUS

Years 1929-1932. The grandson of the Negus, Prince Grhane Sollassié Mbassa was enrolled in the Royal Mining School of Vigàta. From this true fact Andrea Camilleri draws inspiration to imagine a “tasty dossier, things said and things written”: the letters, documents, news articles, in a climate of genuine general stupidity. The prince “turns out to be a virtuoso of bribery and an athlete of deception: all grumbling, he is a bravado; promising much, the authorities, and even more paying, without ever getting anything. Even the Duce foams and quivers, in Rome, and suffers gradually the Ethiopian’s cheap shots. Like the novel’s very young prince, Camilleri is also, in his own way, a fraud according to truth: he mocks and pranks by writing and inventing documents, to be in the end on the side of historical truth.