‘I would love for us all to meet again here, on an evening like this, in a hundred years! I hope so, I wish it for you!’ With these words, Andrea Camilleri greeted the audience that had come to see his debut in Conversazione su Tiresia (Conversation about Tiresias) at the Greek theatre in Syracuse. It was 2018, and the man who had directed hundreds of plays over more than forty years took to the stage ‘on an evening full of emotion, in which everyone clearly felt the overlap between the writer's blindness and that of Tiresias, for both of whom it was a form of retribution to be able to see into the things and events of life.’ Savatteri was also there that evening, just as he was at his side in Racalmuto when he was appointed director of the theatre and on many other occasions when the two friends, both from the province of Agrigento, which has Pirandello as its “tribal chief” and Sciascia as its main inspiration, shared readings, travels and memories. Following the thread of a twenty-year conversation and thanks to many photos and documents preserved in the Andrea Camilleri Fund, Il contastorie di Vigàta is a faithful and passionate portrait of a Sicilian friendship. ‘The real one,’ as Montalbano would say, ‘is based on the unspoken, on intuition: a friend doesn't need to ask questions, the other person understands independently and acts accordingly.’ Memorable figures and moments parade through these pages: Pirandello knocking on the door to greet Andrea's grandmother. Robert Capa capturing some epic moments of the liberation of Sicily in the collective memory. And then there are the great masters of the National Academy of Dramatic Arts, the years of feverish work between theatre productions and television adaptations, the meeting with Leonardo Sciascia and Elvira Sellerio, up to the first novels in that unique language that makes possible a new literary way of recounting Sicily. Without his extraordinary storytelling art, it would not have been possible to narrate the Sicilian universe in all its complexity. And it is in this direction that Savatteri invites readers to preserve the precious legacy left by Andrea Camilleri, so that Salvo Montalbano's warning may resonate not only in the streets of Vigàta but everywhere.