Deceptions in Il Filo di Fumo: Andrea Camilleri’s First Historical Novel

A thin line of smoke is a perfect Camilleri image, a heavy smoker. Il filo di fumo is Andrea Camilleri’s first historical novel and my most recent reading in the course of writing a contracted book on his historical fiction. Reading it with that larger project in mind has made one thing especially clear: this is not only a novel that contains deception. It is a novel built out of deceptions.

Some are comic. Some are cruel. Some are social habits so ordinary that the characters barely recognize them as lies. Camilleri places them inside a world where gossip, commerce, status, memory, and public speech all become tools of concealment. The result is a book that feels light on the surface and far more intricate underneath. In a way, we have the same scope and sense of the masks of Pirandello but in a more lighthearted, though similarly complex, tone.

The novel begins to feel legible through distance, rumor, and signs that may mislead.

Does Camilleri deceive the reader while narrating?

One of the pleasures of the book is that Camilleri makes the reader participate in the same unstable world as the characters. We judge too quickly. We trust the wrong signals. We enjoy a comic surface, then notice the machinery underneath. It resonates with the readers perhaps: some plots, some characters might sound familiar, unfortunately close to the context and the stories lived.

The reader has to listen for tone, watch how stories are repeated, and notice how different characters benefit from different versions of reality. This is why the novel requires rereading (and perhaps more than twice, as I am doing). The first reading follows the plot. A second reading notices the arrangements: who knows what, who says what, who pretends not to know, and who understands more than they admit. The third reading might afford the reader a clearer picture of everything that is unfolding and of the correct role and place of the characters, which are many!

Why this first historical novel matters

As the beginning of Camilleri’s historical fiction, Il filo di fumo already contains many of the traits that would define his later work. It brings together local history, invented memory, comic excess, social critique, and a deep suspicion of official versions.

The historical novels do not sit apart from his better-known crime fiction as a lesser-known side project. They reveal the same fascination with evidence, power, language, and truth. I will continue to delve into this novel but also will go forward with my reading of the other historical books. I hope my new work will be as fascinating to the readers as it is to me while pondering upon it and writing it.

Behind the public face of Camilleri’s Sicily, private plots and old resentments gather force.