Events unfold in 1950s Italy and narrate the protagonist's apprenticeship to life. Two mothers set him forth into a city which, like him, struggles to understand its provenance and purpose. Determined to understand his origin, he is both actor and spectator to a series of misadventures plaguing him and his connections. The protagonist discovers he is clairvoyant, but his insights only allow him to decipher his past and that of others. With one eye, the infant sees the unfolding of mundane events, with the other he paints on a canvas of wonders.His quest for truth commences in his condominium. There, he observes a flurry of stories tangential to his own. We sympathise with Iotti the usher, who lost her daughter to a throat infection. We drive with the communist Giovanni Basovici, and his friend's corpse on a last adventure. Our hearts beat with Giuseppe's as he peers through beautiful Figheira's hatchery of desires. We cry with the daughter who does not know her father, and lives her life full of questions and void of answers. We relive our childhood fears, as the protagonist descends into the cellar's shadows, approaching his truth as he crosses the Styx.Family tensions arise as aunts launch crusades against his mother, guilty of having stolen their brother. A stash of letters from the Libyan front highlight his father's preference for stones and lizards over her. The protagonist's love affair with his Algerian angel fills us with warmth as we too have shared that same innocent impossible love. The infant has grown up. He is now exploring relationships between people, progress and objects, weaving a web of connections in a bid to find his own truths. The telephone's cacophony has become the house's new silence. The refrigerator has replaced the ice blocks. Progress has erupted into his life like a bulldozer. Aid in his quest comes in the form of an Encyclopaedia, which he will use to conquer knowledge. The refrigerator has a soul in the form of Tecumseh, the Native American shaman, enclosed in his icy coffin. His incessant buzzing introduces his mother's neurosis, which only electroshocks can cure.He will guide him to the place of no return, to the place where he is yet to be born. With one slash of his knife, he heralds the protagonist into this folly, and thus he is born.
| Author: Mario Paluan, Edoardo Simone Paluan |
| Publisher: Independently Published |
| Publication Date: Aug 17, 2019 |
| Number of Pages: 224 pages |
| Language: English |
| Binding: Paperback |
| ISBN-10: 1686636598 |
| ISBN-13: 9781686636592 |
