PUBLICATIONS

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ISBN: 9788893906340

Pages: 304 

Price: 13 EUR

Nominated by Laura Bosio for the 2022 Strega Prize: 

"One enters, indeed one penetrates and one sinks into the pages of this book as if one were at the side of whoever is writing them. A man and a soul inextricably divided in two: the Alexander who lives in London and who at the famous Warburg Institute studies the medieval and modern cartographies of Paradise which placed the ultramundane in a specific place on earth, perhaps between the Ganges and the Nile; and Alessandro taken by life, by the women he repeatedly seduces, by the inebriation of childhood sailing on the Abruzzo sea, and together by a spiritual tension towards an unattainable but inescapable divine. In search, like the authors of the beautiful maps he explores, of a transcendent settlement, of a heaven on earth, with an eagerness for perfection that shuns any mediocrity. Until one summer, heralded by ailments that the doctors are unable to immediately interpret, a tumor settles in his brain. 

A bit like the beloved Dante, Alessandro tastes death, falling under the earth's surface, in an infernal journey from which he rises renewed. And he begins to write it, the story that led him to the Vita nova and to the encounter with the Unique Woman, the true Beatrice, to make it universal by also giving others "the benefit of tears and laughter". In his flamboyant, crackling, everyday and lofty, bizarre and intense, libertine and deeply moral way that won me over."

Laura Bosio

ISBN: 9780226082615

Pages: 176

Price: 43 USD

Published by University of Chicago Press

"Where is paradise? It always seems to be elsewhere, inaccessible, outside of time. Either it existed yesterday or it will return tomorrow; it may be just around the corner, on a remote island, beyond the sea. Across a wide range of cultures, paradise is located in the distant past, in a longed-for future, in remote places or within each of us. In particular, people everywhere in the world share some kind of nostalgia for an innocence experienced at the beginning of history. For two millennia, learned Christians have wondered where on earth the primal paradise could have been located. Where was the idyllic Garden of Eden that is described in the Bible? In the Far East? In equatorial Africa? In Mesopotamia? Under the sea? Where were Adam and Eve created in their unspoiled perfection?

Maps of Paradise charts the diverse ways in which scholars and mapmakers from the eighth to the twenty-first century rose to the challenge of identifying the location of paradise on a map, despite the certain knowledge that it was beyond human reach. Over one hundred illustrations celebrate this history of a paradox: the mapping of the unmappable. It is also a mirror to the universal dream of perfection and happiness, and the yearning to discover heaven on earth. "

For a preview of the book, click here 

For a a British Library blog post describing Alessandro's engagement with the subject and its continuing relevance in the world, click here

EAN: 9788838924866: 

Pages: 276

Note by Sergio Valzania:

"Where is the garden of Adam and Eve? In Asia? In Africa? Under the sea, on the moon?" An intellectual journey through the maps of paradise compiled from the origins of Christianity to the present day.

All civilizations have imagined a paradisiacal state, a paradisiacal place, a paradisiacal time. Call it the Garden of the Hesperides, Nirvana, or Mount Meru. Paradise always seems to be somewhere else , inaccessible, outside of time . It existed yesterday, it will return again tomorrow, or it is beyond the ocean or deep within ourselves. Alessandro Scafi invites us to discover paradise, designing an original itinerary of 'Edenic globalization'. 

The protagonists of this itinerary are in fact the most diverse places on earth: not only the places where, throughout history, Christians have located the biblical Garden of Eden and where, in search of Eden, their legendary heroes have attempted to penetrate, but also the places explored by the pioneers of geographical science, and the places that have seen other civilizations and other paradisiacal visions flourish. It seems ineradicable and universal: the nostalgia for a joy experienced in the remote past, the imagination of a joy hidden in the distant present, the yearning for a joy to be experienced in a brighter future."

For a preview of the book click here