Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
No.or all now old reporters we have an unacknowledged passion for Gaetano Savatteri. Whenever something important happens – a crime, a procession with clashes, a trial, the election of the President of the Republic… Gaetano is there.
It is impossible not to notice it, given the imposing size. Yet he has the ability to slip away, between people and things, always leaving the impression of having understood everything, without pretending to judge.
His tv services for Mediasethis inquiries (including at least The attackwritten with our Giovanni Bianconi and become a Rai docufilm), his novels have now become a series, Makarithey would authorize him to pull it off.
Instead for colleagues he always has a polite wordwhispered in that whirlwind of r’s a bit lenient by a Sicilian gentleman of yesteryear.
It could only be Gaetano, therefore, to tell The Sicilians, title of his latest book just published by Laterza. A work that the great Elvira Sellerio, born and died in the same years as the author’s mother – would have defined “graceful”: a term that for the Palermo bourgeoisie “expresses intrinsic moral values”, while the external beauty is indicated by the term “tasty” .
“The Sicilian” by Gaetano Savatteri (Laterza).
Among the thousand stories, I choose that of Tina, or rather Caterina Paolina Anna Luisa Scaliaborn in London under the sign of Scorpio, in November 1858. Her father, Alfonso Scalia, protagonist of the anti-Bourbon revolution of 1848, exiled in England, is one of the financiers of the expedition of the Thousand.
She returns to Palermo where she gets engaged to an Englishman transferred to the island, Pip Whitaker, known as Peppino, king of Marsala. One who enlists his nephews to run the company, and writes letters like this to his sister: «Your son is dead. Send me another one ».
This ferocious story alone is worth the book, set in the Sicily of the Belle Époque, of Villa Igiea (now restored to its splendor), of the liberty of Basile, of the Florio. «June in London, with a stop in Switzerland on the way; from July to September, Scotland; October, around Europe; November in Florence; December in Rome; winter in Sicily ».
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