Transcultural Places in Mediterranean Crime Fiction: The Case of Camilleri’s The Snack Thief and Izzo’s Total Chaos

The Mediterranean Sea has always been of geopolitical strategic importance, but its presence in the media has grown in prominence since beginning of the Mediterranean refugee crisis in the early 1990s (Mendes 568). This emergency has brought with it fragmentation and conflict as well as a reassessment the of Latin concept of Mare nostrum. Originally, the name Mare nostrum claimed the immense body of water, and its shores and trade, for Rome, and this term symbolized the vastness and power of the Roman Empire. The field of Mediterranean studies challenged this long-standing Eurocentric definition the Mediterranean. Fernand Braudel's conception of the Mediterranean as a physical and human unity offers a critical stimulus for scholarly inquiry that still influences the debate today. For instance, according to Amin Maalouf, Mediterranean identity is not an exclusive but an inclusive concept that puts together East and West as well as Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions (90). For Paolo Rumiz, Mare nostrum needs to be interpreted as the sea shared by those who inhabit it, where inhabiting does not necessarily coincide with belonging (136). Finally, Naor Ben-Yehoyada argues for a reemergence of the Mediterranean as a transnational region from World War Il to the present.