Although he is a specialist in the mafia combatin his novels Gianrico Carofiglio prefer to get away from “organized crime”to focus on the crimes committed by ordinary people, those that represent the “banality of evil”.
This Italian writer who was born in Bari in 1961, came to Argentina for the first time this year to present his novel at the Book Fair “Penelope’s Discipline” (Duomo). The narration is the first scene of a saga that still has many chapters to come, with an irresistible character: a former prosecutor facing the loss of her positionwith a life that has gotten out of control.
Carofiglio is a very successful writer in Europe. Magistrate, prosecutor and politicianIn the first part of his professional life, he fought organized crime. Later, he withdrew from these activities to dedicate yourself fully to literature. All the knowledge that he accumulated in his judicial stage is turned today into dizzying police officers, which have been taken to the cinema and to streaming. “Involuntary witness” and “The past is a strange land”are some of the titles that have been translated into Spanish.
About his books, justice and the characters in his novels, Carofiglio spoke in Buenos Aires with NOTICIAS.
NEWS: Is this the first of your books to be published in Argentina?
Gianrico Carofiglio: No. My first novel translated into another language was “The past is a strange land”, edited by El Ateneo in 2005. Many of my novels were translated into Spanish, but it is my first time in Argentina presenting a book.
NEWS: Have you always written literature, even while working in justice?
Carofiglio: I started writing my first novel in 2000. And it was published in 2002, with the title “Involuntary witness”. Ever since I was a child I thought I wanted to be a writer. He tried, he tried, but he couldn’t. He would start writing and after a few days he would stop saying, “I’m not ready.” A very silly phrase, because no one is ever ready to write.
NEWS: Have you always written police?
Carofiglio: I prefer to say that I write “investigative novels”, because investigation alludes to the police but also to an internal investigation. In my novels there are always two parallel stories: the external investigation and something that happens inside the character. I have also written stories that are not genre, training novels, for example. The last one that was translated into Spanish is the story of a relationship between father and son. The title is “3 in the morning” (Anagram).
NEWS: Are your investigators always people linked to justice?
Carofiglio: There is a first series of novels where the protagonist is the lawyer Guido Guerrieri. They talk about the judicial system but on the lawyer’s side and not on the prosecutor’s side. Then there are the three novels where the protagonist is a “carabiniere”, a judicial police officer. The latest investigator is Penelope, a former prosecutor who left her post. The novels by carabiniere Pietro Fenoglio have been adapted for a TV series to be broadcast on RAI, the Italian public channel.
NEWS: Some of the best-known Italian series in the world are linked to drug trafficking, which is a subject you know very well.
Carofiglio: I’m not very interested in counting organized crime. I am much more interested in what I call “disorganized crime”, that is, crimes committed for stupid reasons, for what can be defined as “the banality of evil”. Human stupidity produces irreparable tragedies.
NEWS: Why did you want this novel to have a female protagonist? She herself says in the book that she rarely thinks of women in relation to crime. And, in fact, there are few female characters in the police.
Carofiglio: I had wanted to write a novel with a female lead for a long time. She had the idea of telling a story from a different point of view. And Penelope is a woman, but she has characteristics that are masculine. She is a character full of contrasts. I have talked to many women while writing this novel, trying to familiarize myself with a way of seeing the world different from mine. I had to learn to see things that I didn’t see before, material details, but also psychological nuances that men often overlook.
NEWS: He is also a character with a great void, although he has a lot of strength.
Carofiglio: He is a tragic character. Her life is broken by something she feels guilty about. She is a strong, tough woman, but at the same time very hurt, very hurt. The second book will be a new story, but it will also contain the memory of what happened in the past. It will be called “Rencor”.
NEWS: How much does knowing the ins and outs of the law influence you to write your novels?
Carofiglio: To write a novel of this type, one must know exactly how the magistracy works. If I read a work that talks about justice and I find an error, I close the book. I can not continue. I write things that can happen in the real world. Everything in these books either really happened or could happen.
NEWS: Do you still have any relationship with the world of politics? Or is he just writing?
Carofiglio: I continue to participate in the political debate, but I no longer dedicate myself to active politics. I write journalistic notes, I participate in television programs where I give my opinion and I write essays where I express my way of seeing.
NEWS: Argentina is experiencing a great crisis in relation to justice, at this moment. Some of the politicians feel that the judiciary is persecuting and harassing them. But there is also a feeling among people that justice does not protect citizens from crime. Does this kind of conflict occur in Italy?
Carofiglio: Yes. Politicians of the right and of the left, when they find themselves involved in judicial matters, allege that they are being persecuted. The second question, no. This theme is not that strong, criminals are punished appropriately. The penal repression of common crime, in Italy, works. There is not a security problem. Although there are politicians who use the pretext of security to take advantage. In general, in Italy serious crimes are decreasing year by year, so there is no real problem. Today, in relation to the number of inhabitants, there are more homicides in Finland than in Italy.
NEWS: And the crimes by gender violence?
Carofiglio: The femicide are the real problem today. While the rest of the crimes decrease, femicides remain stable. It is a serious cultural problem. A certain type of man cannot bear the idea of a woman thinking for herself and making autonomous, self-determined decisions. For these men, women are objects of property. That they are autonomous subjects, they find it unbearable.
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