Il volo della martora

On 9 October 1963, a slice of Mount Toc fell into Lake Vajont, raising an immense wave that swept the valley and overwhelmed all the houses in its path. There were more than two thousand deaths: a huge catastrophe. In that moment something was lost forever: not only human lives, but an entire unrepeatable world that now lives again, as if by miracle, in this book by Mauro Corona. The author was only thirteen years old when the tragedy occurred. He did not abandon his valley, but remained clinging to the rocks, son of the woods and brother of the animals, carefully preserving in his memory the images of the past. The twenty-six stories that make up "The Flight of the Marten" form a unitary fresco: the story of Erto and of many lives of toil and suffering. It is a story of simple men and women, and also of animals and trees, because they too have a soul and speak to those who know how to listen to them. ITAS Award 1998, now in its tenth reprint.