Donna Leon was almost 50 when she wrote her first crime novel. The scene is Venice, where Commissario Brunetti, the character in her novel, has been solving one case after the other for the past 30 years. The books were translated into 35 languages and made the American-born bestselling author. Donna Leon is now celebrating her 80th birthday – and is still writing. The next book is already in the works.
From globetrotter to author
For decades, nothing in the American’s life pointed to a career as a writer. Donna Leon was born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1942, grew up free and optimistic – and became a globetrotter at an early age. At the age of 23 she left the USA to continue her studies in Italy. For 15 years, from 1965 to 1980, she worked as a tour guide in Rome, as a copywriter in London, taught English language and literature at American schools in Switzerland, Iran, China and nine months in Saudi Arabia. “As a young woman, I just wanted to have fun,” she said a few years ago on a reading tour in Germany.
Venice – longtime residence of Donna Leon and scene of her crime novels
However, it was no fun when her dissertation on Jane Austen was lost in 1979 while fleeing the Islamic revolution. She worked on the design for five years. The fact that the loss also meant the end of her academic career as a literary scholar “was probably the best thing that ever happened to me in my life,” she said in interviews afterwards. Venice became Leon’s new home.
The fine Inspector Brunetti
Her subtle and humble hero, Commissario Guido Brunetti, also lives in Venice, together with his wife Paola – a specialist in American literature like the author – and their two children. Your spacious apartment with the large roof terrace at the confluence of two canals can be precisely located. There is now even a city map on which it is listed – and a travel guide to the locations of the Brunetti novels. “Brunetti is a beautiful piece of fiction,” said Donna Leon in an interview a few years ago. “He is the way I would like men to be: reserved, responsible, discreet.”
Leon has been associated with this engaging character since 1992. The idea for her first thriller came to the music lover after a visit to the opera in the “La Fenice” theater in Venice, where she went with a musician friend, as she described in an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: “He was angry with the conductor, very angry, and said, ‘I’ll kill him!’ And I replied: ‘Let me do it – but with words.'” The result was the first case of Inspector Brunetti. “Venezisches Finale” was the name of the debut novel that was published in German in 1993 and was a great success. Since then, new cases have appeared year after year, most recently the 31st Brunetti story in May of this year “charitable gifts”.
The crimes are often typical of Venice: it’s about corruption, intrigues or mafia real estate and art trade. In “Acqua Alta” (1997), for example, the constantly rising floodwater drives the action forward, in “Blutige Steine” (2006) a black street vendor is shot dead in front of many witnesses in the market.
Crime at the pulse of time
Blood does not splatter in Donna Leon’s crime novels, their author avoids brutality and carnage. Brunetti tries to understand perpetrators and victims, their passions, their greed for power and money, their fear and desperation. As an author, Leon has found a clear enemy in the Catholic Church, especially in the lay association Opus Dei, which is surrounded by many legends. For the author, their representatives are on a par with unscrupulous large corporations or the mafia.
“Venice was the first place in the world I wanted to live in,” she once confessed. But now she has moved away. When she’s not travelling, she lives and writes in a small alpine village of 300 in Switzerland, in Graubünden, just a few kilometers from the Italian border. Venice had become too touristy for her, especially in summer.
Passion for baroque music
In Germany, the Brunetti thrillers are particularly successful. Brunetti’s fans follow his footsteps in Venice, cook the dishes of his aristocratic wife and probably know every film in which the inspector investigates. ARD filmed many of Brunetti’s novels. According to Donna Leon, she doesn’t particularly like the films, she says they’re too German and not enough Italian. But that’s not so important, she sold the rights and stayed out.
Donna Leon happy in the middle: “Il Pomo d’oro” won the ECHO Klassik in 2016
In addition to literature, Donna Leon is enthusiastic about music. Her passion for baroque music – especially for the composer Georg Friedrich Handel – prompted her to co-found the Venetian baroque ensemble “Il Pomo d’Oro” and to support it to this day.
Autobiographical Stories
Just in time for the writer’s 80th birthday, the Swiss publishing house Diogenes has put together a collection of autobiographical stories: “A Life in Stories”. Leon reviews her life in it. And for Brunetti fans, the foreword reads: “But the very best thing, at least for me, is continuing to be with Brunetti, his family and friends, and that I can give him the opportunity to learn more about himself and his past, from to tell his thoughts and feelings.”
