Author:
Romana Petri
Publisher:
Neri Pozza
Release Date:
03-03-2026
Perhaps there is no distance capable of shielding us from the explosion of a love that ends. Luciana Albertini knows this well; she still carries in her heart the sudden abandonment by her husband Vasco. And if during the day life pulls her elsewhere — painting, which has now made her an artist known around the world; the immortal dog Barabba who comforts her in moments of confusion; and even that alpha letter she paints on her forehead every morning to remind herself that she is a winner — the nights are endless and filled with questions, above all one: why? Vasco Dos Santos knows the answer, what drove him to end that relationship he stubbornly refuses to call by its true name. He knows the anger, the discomfort, the sense of failure that gave him the strength to leave Rome and return to his Lisbon. To that family quagmire from which she had tried, in vain, to rescue him: an overbearing yet absent father, a warrior sister who survived hell, the memory of an immense and fragile mother, the staged ritual of family lunches. He knows why he turned his back on that strange woman, perhaps too talented.
Luciana and Vasco are both suspended, facing a crossroads: to let go of what has been and be reborn into life like butterflies, or to remain trapped in the past, in resentment, like eternal chrysalises.