Romanzo Criminale (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Romanzo Criminale (Italian for "detective novel") is a detective novel by the Italian writer Giancarlo De Cataldo from 2002. It shows the rise and fall of a gang of criminals who ruled organized crime in Rome between the late 1970s and early 1980s . The background is formed by the "leaden years" in the history of Italy and the entanglement of state and politics in crime. The novel is based on the real events surrounding the Roman Magliana gang. It was made into a feature film (2005) and a television series (2008-2010). The German translation by Karin Fleischanderl was published by Folio Verlag in 2010.

content

For a big coup, the kidnapping of Baron Rossellini, two gangs of petty criminals join forces in 1978: the Lebanese gang, which includes his always elegantly dressed childhood friend Dandi, Satana and Scrocchiazeppi, as well as the Freddos gang, which consists of Fierolocchio and the twin brothers Aldo and Ciro Buffoni exists. They are joined by Botola, the irascible Bufalo and Sorcio, the mouse. The gang operates as a peer group, but the truth is that Lebanese and Freddo are their heads who have the same lofty plans to rule all of Rome one day. They agree not to split the ransom, but to use it as start-up capital to enter the drug trade , and through Mario il Sardo and his henchmen Trentadenardi and Ricotta establish contacts with the Neapolitan Camorra .

Aldo Moro in the captivity of the Red Brigades (1978)

From the beginning, Commissioner Scialoja and prosecutor Borgia investigated the gang. But at a time when the whole of Italy is committed to the fight against the Red Brigades , they receive little support in the state apparatus for the prosecution of common criminals. This is even worse after the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro . On behalf of the Camorra, Lebanese gang also took part in the search for the kidnapped until they were called back because the employers would rather see the former prime minister dead. Through the prostitute Patrizia, Dandi's mistress, Scialoja first comes across the gang. But the inspector also falls in love with the unapproachable beauty that now stands between the two men.

Bologna attack (1980)

Under Lebanese leadership, the gang's influence has grown steadily. They eliminate their competitor Terribile and establish contact with the Mafia godfather Zio Carlo via Nembo Kid, with the Italian neo-fascists via Nero and with the Italian secret service via agents Zeta and Pigreco, where Vecchio, the "old man", secretly pulls the strings extend to the stop of Bologna . Freddo, for whom the freedom of the gang is paramount, follows the dependencies with skepticism. But Lebanese shows traits of growing megalomania. The two quarrel over Lebanese plans to withhold the gang's money and entrust the banker Secco. When the Lebanese grandly refuses to pay off gambling debts with the Gemito brothers, the barrel seems to have overflowed. One evening in 1980, a Lebanese man was shot and killed by a passing motorcyclist.

The death of their leader throws the gang into a crisis. The Mafia recognizes Dandi as a legitimate successor. He made contacts with new suppliers and moved more and more away from the original gang members who rallied around Freddo, who remained adherent to the old principles and above all wanted to take revenge on Lebanese murderers. When Nicolito Gemito is murdered, Dandi abandons his accomplices, whereupon Bufalo and Ricotta are arrested. Freddo is imprisoned several times for minor offenses and loses more and more control of the gang, whose influence in the city is waning. After being betrayed by Aldo Buffoni, he kills his old friend, which drives another wedge into the community.

In 1983 Scialoja finally got the big hit, and it was Sorcio, the mouse, the most insignificant member of the gang, who, through his testimony, had his accomplices arrested. Only Dandi escapes the arrest that his rival Scialoja wants to carry out with his own hands, but is also arrested the following year. In prison, Freddo breaks free from the gang for good. He only longs for a life by the side of his girlfriend Roberta. He becomes seriously ill from an injection of infected blood and is transferred to a hospital, from which he withdraws. Most of the gang members were sentenced to long prison terms, only Dandi and Botola were released in 1987. Trentadenardi, who embezzled the gang's assets, turns himself in to the police, but the Italian judiciary does not believe key witnesses . The lawyer Miglianico, a lodge brother of Dandi, ensures in the following year that the Supreme Court of Cassation overturns all judgments and determines that there has never been a criminal organization.

When Scialoja's investigation reveals the role of Vecchio, prosecutor Borgia backs down and does not affect the immunity of the old man. A journalist hired by Vecchio coaxes the embittered police officer into accusing the Italian state of working hand in hand with the Mafia. He is then suspended from duty. Scialoja does not distance itself from his statements and is sidelined. But just as Vecchio let him down, he rebuilds the young man, whose fearless commitment has always impressed him, after a heart attack and the associated premonition of the finiteness of his work and makes him deputy prefect of the police in Rome.

In 1990 Dandi largely withdrew from all criminal activities and made his living doing legal business. But that has made him dispensable for the mafia, and they give the green light for his murder. Scrocchiazeppi, who, like all gang members from the very beginning, feels betrayed by Dandi, fails and is in turn killed by Dandi. After all, it's Bufalo, Fierolocchio, Pischello and Ugolino who kill their former boss together. Dandi receives a grand burial in a Roman basilica with the participation of the city's social elite. Secco, who has risen from banker to string puller and successor to Dandi - also in favor of Patrizia - is setting up rumors that the attack was the work of Freddo. Scialoja tracks down the fugitive in Nicaragua . He is extradited to Italy, where he and the remaining gang members are tried again and this time for good. After Vecchio's death, Scialoja receives his diary, which gives him power over the entire Italian leadership. He feels triumph at the thought that he will play the old man's game in the future, but at the same time also a stab of defeat.

background

Romanzo Criminale is based on the real events surrounding the Roman Magliana gang, which ruled organized crime in Rome between 1977 and 1983 and established a Mafia-style organization for the first time in the Italian capital. The gang did business with Mafia, Camorra, Chinese and South American drug traffickers, neo-fascist terrorists, secret brotherhoods and secret services. At the height of their success, the abrupt crash followed, the members went into hiding, were murdered or imprisoned.

Real role models of the fictional characters include:

  • Franco Giuseppucci ("Er Fornaretto", later "Er Negro") - Il Lebanese
  • Massimo Carminati - Il Nero
  • Maurizio Abbatino ("Crispino") - Il Freddo
  • Enrico De Pedis - Il Dandi
  • Sabrina Minardi - Patrizia
  • Marcello Colafigli ("Marcellone") - Bufalo
  • Edoardo Toscano (“Operaietto”) - Scrocchiazeppi
  • Libero Mancone - Fierolocchio
  • Antonio Mancini ("L'Accattone") - ricotta
  • Vittorio Carnovale - Ruggero Buffoni
  • Franco Nicolini ("Franchino er Criminale") - Il Terribile
  • Claudio Sicilia ("Il Vesuviano") - Trentadenari
  • Nicolino Selis ("Il Sardo") - Il Sardo
Giancarlo De Cataldo (2010)

Giancarlo De Cataldo, then judge at the Roman jury , led the trial in 1995 against 69 defendants of the Magliana gang, who were sentenced to a total of around 500 years in prison. He said in retrospect: "As an author, I decided to take on this process, not as a judge." After he had already written several detective novels and essays about his experiences at the enforcement court , he found in the story of the Magliana gang that material that he had been looking for for a long time. From 1996 onwards he worked on the files for his novel, which was finally published in 2002. He emphasized: “ Romanzo Criminale is really a novel. Even if he starts from a true story, Romanzo Criminale is certainly not the 'true story of the Maglianabande' - and never wanted to be. ”Instead, he“ changed names, situations and crimes. If it was recorded in the trial files that the crime was going in a certain direction, I told it in a different way because it is a work of fantasy. ”With the character Il Vecchio, he personified an idea of ​​the former president Sandro Pertini who saw left and right terrorism controlled by a secret center he called "Il Vecchio".

In two later works, De Cataldo returned to characters from Romanzo Criminale : In the novel Nelle mani giuste (German: Dirty Hands , 2011), published in 2007, he reports on the time of Inspector Nicola Scialoja as a puller with Vecchio's documents. His lover Patrizia is again between two men. The novel spans the years 1992 to 1994, the end of the First Republic, the collapse of the established parties and the rise of Silvio Berlusconi . The novel Io sono il Lebanese from 2012 (German: The King of Rome , 2013) is the prehistory to Romanzo Criminale and shows the way Lebanese into crime. Together with La forma della paura from 2010 (German: Zeit der Wut , 2012), the novels form for Tobias Gohlis “a tetralogy of recent Italian history in its crimes”.

reception

According to Tobias Gohlis, Romanzo Criminale is "a monster of almost 600 tightly printed pages [...], well over 60 characters and around 12 main characters". The author tells in a style that is reminiscent of neorealism : “It is the stream of life, recorded in black and white, rough cut, the usual punching and stabbing.” The chapters and sentences are short, fast-paced, breathless. Dialogues often predominate and poetic finesse is largely dispensed with. According to Andreas Förster, it is “the language of the protagonists that creates the images, a cold, brutal language that is always about violence, power and sex.” Ambros Waibel recognizes James Ellroy's role model : “Super cops, super criminals, super prostitutes ; hyperrealism mixed with expressionist action lyrics ; Accuracy in historical detail blended with freedom of fiction. Everything is correct, but it is not necessarily true - because it is about things that have not been clarified ”.

For Isabella Pohl, the novel spans “a long era of contemporary Italian history” and is about the “gray area between state and anti-state”, the strategy of tension , state terrorism . De Cataldo fills the gaps in the historiography with an "ominous voice from the off that guides world events". Il Vecchio, the old man, watches over a system that is reminiscent of Kafka's castle . In this system, politicians are mere dummies and logically do not appear in the novel. For Ambros Waibel, this Vecchio is the personification of the anti-state: “a player who always wants to throw order back into chaos, because this chaos alone guarantees his position as a puppeteer who holds all the strings in his hand”. The character himself speaks of an “ anarchist form of control”. According to an ironic hint in the person directory, it does not exist at all. According to Tobias Gohlis, "a quality feature of crime literature is how sharply its shape can be seen in the concave mirror of the criminal."

Christina Höfferer reads Romanzo Criminale as a detailed fresco from Rome, in which the prostitute Patrizia in particular serves as a metaphor for the eternal city: “Patrizia is the Roman she-wolf and the detective Scialoja and the criminal Dandi are the twins who nourish the she-wolf. The good and the bad. ”Judge De Cataldo does not judge his characters:“ He does not accuse them of murderers and criminals, but in the end everyone pays. Everyone dies. There are no winners, only losers ”. It is an “overwhelming tension curve” that ultimately leads to downfall for Isabella Pohl: “Greed and fear split ties, bring the system to collapse”. Andrea Camilleri calls the book a “gigantic fresco of a global defeat - not just of its protagonists, but of our society as a whole”.

For Wieland Freund , De Cataldo reinvented the mafia thriller in Romanzo Criminale , as he juxtaposed Mario Puzo's “great opera” with a “documentary piece ” that was “eminently political” and reads “like the song of the dead in Italy first republic ”. Maike Albath spoke of “a fabulous threepenny opera ”, Isabella Pohl read a “furious criminological social epic”. For Tobias Gohlis, the novel is “a treasure trove of bizarre stories, characters, conspiracies and everyday scenes. His attitude is realistic, but also ethnographic and romantic ”. De Cataldo explained: "The detective novel is the realistic literature of our time."

Romanzo Criminale has sold over 400,000 copies in Italy . The novel was awarded the Premio Giorgio Scerbanenco in 2003. The French translation won the Prix ​​du polar européen in 2006 . In Germany, Romanzo Criminale was on the KrimiWelt best list in August and September 2010 .

In 2005, Michele Placido filmed the novel in an Italian feature film with Kim Rossi Stuart , Anna Mouglalis , Pierfrancesco Favino , Claudio Santamaria , Stefano Accorsi and Riccardo Scamarcio in the leading roles. In the years 2008 to 2010, an Italian television series with 22 episodes followed. Francesco Montanari , Vinicio Marchioni , Alessandro Roja , Marco Bocci , Daniela Virgilio , Andrea Sartoretti and Antonio Gerardi played under the direction of Stefano Sollima .

Through the novel and its film adaptations, the Magliana gang became an Italian myth , which is homage to on websites, T-shirts and in city tours to the filming locations. According to Tobias Gohlis, “it happened to her like any large criminal organization: the facts are overgrown by myth and fiction. Or to put it another way: fiction has created its own reality. "

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Tobias Gohlis and Giancarlo de Cataldo: Italy, told in its crimes . Epilogue to the novel The King of Rome . Timetable (pdf).
  2. ↑ Romanzo Criminale, realtà tra finzione e . On Sky Atlantic HD Italy.
  3. ↑ a b Christina Höfferer: Romanzo Criminale. Thriller by Giancarlo de Cataldo . At ORF , April 2, 2010.
  4. ↑ a b Tobias Gohlis: A detective novel. Or how a Roman street gang nearly took power in Italy . Review as book tip of the week on arte.tv from July 19, 2010.
  5. ↑ a b Andreas Förster: Fresco of a defeat . In: Berliner Zeitung of September 9, 2010.
  6. ↑ a b Ambros Waibel: Italian Secrets . In: the daily newspaper of July 17, 2010.
  7. ^ A b Isabella Pohl: Business between the state and the anti-state . In: The Standard of March 14, 2010.
  8. ↑ Wieland Freund : The prince is saving on a drug ship . In: Die Welt of March 30, 2013.
  9. ↑ Maike Albath : Rome is on fire . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 16, 2016.
  10. ↑ Isabella Pohl: Successful years made of lead . In: Der Standard from July 8, 2011.
  11. ↑ Tobias Gohlis: Is it all an invention? . In: The time of October 30, 2012.
  12. ^ Giancarlo De Cataldo: Romanzo Criminale at Folio Verlag .
  13. ↑ Romanzo criminale (2005) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  14. ↑ Romanzo Criminale - The Godfather of Rome in the Internet Movie Database (English)