L'IMPERATORE DELLE NUVOLE

This visionary novel explores

It is the near future, sometime after 2026. A white wall runs along the coast line of North Africa across four countries. It separates the desert from the sea, the damned from the rich; those who try to cross it from those who come to visit it as tourists. Franco Zomer is a guard at "the Wall". So was his father. His dayjob is to send migrants back, at night they are caught and punished. The job is horrific and impossible without drugs and one in particular: Moby Dick. Its effect is very strange: it makes people go back in history and change it. The illusion is perfect, the addiction absolute. Moby Dick is an epidemic among both the torturers and the tortured. Franco hopes to rewind his life and change the events of one fateful day, when he was still a happy man and, for a moment, could have remained happy. Pierpaolo Vettori (born 1967) has been a finalist for the Calvino Prize twice. He has published several novels, was nominated for Premio Strega 2022 and lives in Turino.