Title: Cultural Memory in Contemporary Narrative
Description: This dissertation discusses Italy's bestselling author Andrea Camilleri's series of Montalbano crime novels. It poses the question of what makes Camilleri's series so successful in the contemporary literary marketplace and if his success is a representation of Italian culture (and by extension, the postmodern or post-postmodern Italian literary scene). This dissertation deals with Camilleri and his success from a narrative literary point of view. It examines Camilleri's work from several different perspectives, placing it within the vaster context of Italian literature while also taking a meticulous look at Camilleri as the author who has managed to free a literary genre from its previous confines and opened new boundaries for Italian literature.