Author:
Federico Pace
Publisher:
Einaudi
Release Date:
11-03-2025
His father had died a few months earlier, when Federico Pace was working on the work of the Swiss photographer Werner Bischof. While scrolling through the photos taken in Holland after the end of the Second World War, he found a series of portraits that were very different from the others. One of these is a punch in the stomach: the photo of a child who resembles his father, especially because of the scars that disfigure his face. This sudden realisation is where Pace’s journey begins. He goes to the place where his father lived, visits the places he frequented, contacts his friends. He retraces his life. From the early years spent in a small village in the Agro Pontino to the special relationship with his uncle Manlio; from the explosion of the mine that deprived him of his sight at the age of five to the months of hospitalisation at the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome; from the years at the Istituto Romagnoli for the blind to the redemption of a man who has earned a future for himself by graduating, falling in love and getting married. At the same time, driven by the force that only the entities he evokes possess, Pace sets out to find the child in the photo, who acquires a name, Jo Corbey, and a life to be discovered and understood. He too was a victim of the war’s final twist in Roermond: the explosion of a mine. By interweaving the marks left by his father with those of Jo, almost a twin in terms of destiny and identity, Pace puts together the pieces of his father’s story. In this way he restores tenderness and dignity to him, and finally finds a very personal way to say goodbye to him, to let him go, and to come to terms with his loss.