LA PRESA DI MACALLÈ / THE CAPTURE OF MACALLÈ

The Capture of Macallè is set in 1935 Sicily during the Abyssinian War. The protagonist of the novel is a violated child who is transformed by the hammering fascist propaganda of the time, which among other things “sacralized” Mussolini as “the man of Providence,” into a murderer, but he is an innocent murderer because he is deprived of the opportunity to develop his critical autonomy. Camilleri returns to the pure novel. A child watches the world in the fascist 1930s and the world steals his childhood.
The Capture of Macallè is a paradoxical novel that intentionally transmutes into too much, and exceeds all measure, beginning with the promotion of a six-year-old “angilu minchiutu” to protagonist. A grotesque parable, which goes on to fable the tragic and abnormal normality of violence. A story finally, of painful tenderness for a betrayed childhood.