Presentation of the Arabic translation of La forma dell’acqua by Andrea Camilleri
Lebanese University – New Rawda, Department of Italian Language, Centre for Languages and Translation
On the centenary of his birth, the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut pays tribute to Andrea Camilleri — not merely a storyteller, but a true architect of worlds, an interpreter of the Mediterranean, and an inventor of languages — with the presentation of the Arabic translation of his seminal novel The Shape of Water.
The translation, realised by Rami Tawil and published by the Lebanese publishing house Dar El Saqi, will be introduced by the distinguished writer and literary critic Professor Hassan Daoud, who will also engage in discussion with the audience.
The choice of The Shape of Water, Camilleri’s first novel featuring Inspector Montalbano, is deeply symbolic. Water is the element that escapes capture, that has no fixed form yet sustains life. Within the novel, it becomes a metaphor for truth itself: mutable, elusive, perpetually adapting to circumstance. It epitomises Camilleri’s Mediterranean noir — narratives that move beyond the mechanics of crime-solving to reveal the fluid complexities and moral ambiguities of society.
In Beirut, this symbolism acquires further resonance. Camilleri’s Sicily is never an insular world but a crossroads, a frontier, shaped by centuries of Arab presence and Mediterranean exchange. His hybrid language, interweaving Italian with Sicilian dialect, speaks directly to those who live between classical Arabic and its many vernaculars.
Presenting Camilleri here, in the nation’s sole faculty of translation and interpretation, is thus both tribute and recognition: La forma dell’acqua is not only an Italian novel, but a Mediterranean story reborn in Arabic, affirming the power of literature to cross borders and unite cultures.