Andrea Camilleri

Originally from Porto Empedocle, Girgenti, Sicily, Camilleri began university studies in the Faculty of Literature at the University of Palermo, but did not complete his degree; during that time he published poems and short stories.
From 1948 to 1950, he studied stage and film direction at the Silvio D'Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts (Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica) and began to take on work as a director and screenwriter, directing especially plays by Pirandello and Beckett. His parents knew and reportedly were "distant friends" of Pirandello, as he relates in his essay on Pirandello, Biography of the Changed Son. His most famous works, the Montalbano series, exhibit many Pirandellian elements: for example, the wild olive tree that helps Montalbano think is on stage in his late work The Giants of the Mountain.
With RAI, Camilleri worked on several TV productions, such as Le inchieste del commissario Maigret with Gino Cervi. In 1977, he returned to the Academy of Dramatic Arts, holding the chair of Film Direction and occupying it for 20 years.
Camilleri wrote his first novel, Il Corso Delle Cose ("The Way Things Go"), in 1978. This was followed by Un Filo di Fumo ("A Thread of Smoke") in 1980. Neither of these works enjoyed any significant popularity.
In 1992, after a long pause of 12 years, Camilleri once more took up novel writing. A new book, La Stagione della Caccia ("The Hunting Season") became a best-seller.
In 1994, Camilleri published La forma dell'Acqua (The Shape of Water), the first in a long series of novels featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, a fractious detective in the police force of Vigàta, an imaginary Sicilian town. The series is written in Italian but with a substantial sprinkling of Sicilian phrases and grammar. The name Montalbano is an…

1998 Nino Martoglio International Book Award.
2003 Grand Officer in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana).
2008 RBA Prize for Crime Writing for La rizzagliata / La muerte de Amalia Sacerdote ("The Death of Amalia Sacerdote"), the world's most lucrative crime fiction prize at €125,000.
Asteroid 204816 Andreacamilleri, discovered by Italian amateur astronomer Vincenzo Casulli in 2007, was named in his honour. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 5 October 2017 (M.P.C. 106503).

Honorary degrees
He received honorary degrees from several Italian universities, including the IULM University of Milan (2002), the University of Pisa (2005), the University of L'Aquila (2007), and the D'Annunzio University of Chieti—Pescara (2007). In 2012, he received an honorary PhD from the Sapienza University of Rome.
Camilleri also received honorary degrees from University College Dublin on 5 December 2011 and the American University of Rome on 30 October 2013.