MY PERSONAL LIBRARY 89

Andrea Camilleri’s 2001 novel Il Re di Girgenti (“The King of Girgenti”) is one of the late Sicilian author’s historical novels. It’s partly based on a few lines in history books that mention a short-lived “monarchy” in Girgenti (“Girgenti”, pronounced with a soft “g” unlike the Maltese “Girgenti” which is pronounced with a hard “g”, is the former name of Agrigento, in Sicily). But in part, the novel’s a work of fiction, in which Camilleri invested his imagination in the biography of Zosimo, King of Girgenti.

One night, the farmer Zosimo Gisuè saves a prince who’s about to fall into a gorge. This is to be both his fortune and misfortune: the prince rewards him handsomely, but Zosimo also finds himself in a political game much bigger than himself. The prince loses all his belongings playing cards and wants to commit suicide. He asks Gisuè to help him in return for a sum of money. The farmer accepts but a duke accuses him of the prince’s murder and he’s thrown in jail.

In the meantime, the Duke, unable to have children, asks Gisuè to impregnate his wife in return for his discharge from prison. Gisuè obliges; the Duke’s wife is so satisfied she no longer wishes to be “possessed” by her husband who exiles her to Palermo where she gives birth to Gisuè’s son.

The same night he’s freed from jail, Gisuè impregnates his own wife, who then births their son Michele. As a newborn, Michele doesn’t cry but laughs; at three months old, he stops sucking his mother’s tit and starts eating olives and drinking wine; at seven months old, he starts talking, fluently.

These strange happenings raise suspicions, and a priest is sent for who confirms that there’s the devil behind it all. A wizard and his talking parrot predict that Michele will one day be crowned king.

Many years later, when the plague hits the town, killing all his family, Zosimo resists the idea of people congregating in the cathedral to pray for salvation, but failing to convince those who matter, he burns down all the churches in town, and ends up in jail.

I won’t spoil the rest for you. It’s a good read. Particularly in these days of plague-like troubles and woe.

Or else you could (re-)read Boccaccio’s Decameron, a collection of fourteenth-century short stories related by a group of people hiding in a villa outside Florence waiting for the plague to pass. Most of the stories are saucy and racy – when Death is close, people think more about sex.

In these coronavirus days, mind the position you choose, or you might get infected.