In the shadow of the gleaming new skyscrapers of Milan’s Isola neighborhood still stands an old railing house. And with her its inhabitants endure: Italo and Bambina, an elderly couple who have always lived in the small two-room apartment on the second floor; Pietro, who left his job as a pharmaceutical representative to open a flower store; Kalinda, returning to Milan after years traveling the world looking for her way. Plus friends Patty and Lola, Marco and Angela from the Lucky bar, and Lucía, (angel) janitor of the apartment building. Lives that flow more or less quietly, until something mysterious happens in the building…. In this surprising and kaleidoscopic novel, Diego Passoni tells us fragments of seemingly ordinary lives that his unique and profound gaze illuminates, revealing their very human extraordinariness. And he tells us about her, Milan, with its thousand lights and as many shadows. An industrious and hyper-competitive city that also knows how to undress its grays made of cynicism, haste and indifference to wear the colors of welcome and inclusion. A living and pulsating city where thousands of people every day perform the same gestures without ever touching each other, like so many small islands, each with its own needs and desires, its own frailties and contradictions. Yet all united by a great dream: to find a place to call, finally, home. (Source IBS.co.uk)
Diego Passoni is an Italian radio host, television host,dancer and writer.
