Verde Eldorado

Migration, rootedness, the search for a place of adoption, a place that can be first and foremost a language: these are the themes of the writing of Adrián Bravi, an Argentinian author who for years has chosen to write in Italian. And here, his themes merge into a training novel, a travel chronicle, an existential parable or, more simply, into the story of a 16th-century boy named Ugolino who, having lost his place in the old world, knows how to find another in the new.Ugolino recounts the crossing together with the legendary Sebastiano Caboto, and above all, he recounts living with a tribe of Indians that is the discovery of a nature, a culture, a humanity to be learned and understood. Because in the West Indies, territories that barely appear on the European maps of the time, there is a whole life to be appreciated, provided one turns one’s usual perspectives on the world upside down.Ugolino lives holed up in a room, prisoner of a hood because a fire has disfigured him and, in the very urban Venice of 1526, disfigurement is a disgrace to be concealed, a horror, a reminder of the misfortunes with which life can overwhelm. But the boy cannot stay long in the room where he is holed up. In fact, his father decides to embark him on the expedition of a friend who can now boast the title of Piloto Mayor: Sebastiano Caboto.On 3 April 1526, young Ugolino is on Caboto’s flagship with a precise task to fulfil: to keep track of everything. The route is for the Indies, the destination the Moluccan Islands in Indonesia, but history tells us that the legendary navigator never arrived there. Cabot breaks his contract with the Spanish Crown to pursue the stories of some survivors of a past expedition who tell of a city made of gold and silver.His fleet sails into the Río de la Plata, then up the Paraná and Paraguay rivers. And it is while sailing the Paraguay that Ugolino falls prisoner along with four companions, quartered and devoured by the Indians. He, however, freed from the hood, is spared thanks to his disfigured face because they, the Indians, in those marks on his face read the touch of the Karai, the lords of fire. And there his other life begins.