It is the story of betrayed childhood and the exaltation of ingenuity.
It is a paradoxical story which brings to light
a very precise historic
moment which by the exultation of the person, of war, of religion and
of the State had a vision which was extremist to the point of madness:
fascism. Camilleri, a fine and elegant writer, restores for us this
period, in all its drama, through the eyes of a six or seven year old
child. The absolute is represented by the battle to take Macallè which
acts as a background to the tragicality of the internal drama of the
protagonist. A child that little by little loses all familiar
references: mother and father, whom he loves both as people and as
parents and who represent all that is real to him. A book where the
radicalization of sex takes all that surrounds the young protagonist
and bears heavily down on him. Caught in a hell that takes the little
Michelino to
extreme forms of corporal martyrdom in order to save
others and transforms him into an assassin to avenge Christ and il
Duce.
“La presa di Macallè” is a book to read and re-read. It is a
warning for all in that it gives account of the damage, moral and
existential, that can befall a child. It is
certainly an extreme book,
but beautiful and fascinating, that takes hold of you as do all the
books of Camilleri, but maybe this one takes hold you a little more
than the others. Camilleri in this book certainly wanted to give an
interpretation of the Fascist period and from his point of view
reconstitutes for us a true image of the Sicily of those years.