Piccolo libro di entomologia fantastica

Daisy, Red, Imre, Ebony and Saul: out-ofthe-ordinary names for out-of-the-ordinary children. Children who feel stifled in theirgrey home town with its distant and ratherhopeless adults. Only the strange exoskeletons and preposterous iridescence of insects arouse the gang’s enthusiasm. In the search for new specimens to add to their collection, the kids set off towards the villa in which, it is said, a huge butterfly house is to be found. Emily, Melchior, Mr Flood, Madame Lamarr and Greenway, the time doctor, are the villa’s not-so-youthful residents, and each one of them is there for a secret reason. This is the story of the extraordinary things that happen when the melancholy patience of old age encounters the hopeful, hungry urgency of youth. In describing the tiniest of nature’s creatures, this is a book that talks about us – because life’s tough carapace can and does crack open, revealing wings ready for the miracle of flight.

“A fantastic world, yet so ancestral, a fairy tale, a dream, where nature recovers with strength and majestic beauty its role in human life.” Il Gazzettino

“Only a writer like Fulvio Ervas could write a novel that ranges from fairy tale to extreme borders of human drama.” Francesco Mannoni, Giornale di Brescia