The Dreamweaver

A very original book, which alternates the story of the pandemic, experienced from the position of those who worked to contain it, with dialogues with people far away in the world but united by dreams and fragility, collected by chance following an experiment on social media.

The story is a "graphical novel" whose plot develops on two levels. A real plan: the city where Gianni lives, the office where he works, his home; and a virtual plan: the global village. The overlap between the real and virtual levels makes reading engaging and never banal.

One evening Gianni publishes a post on his Facebook wall about the shieldmaiden, the Norse warriors, accompanying it with an image of Queen Lagertha, in reality, the Ukrainian-Canadian actress Katheryn Winnick. Shortly afterwards Gianni replaced his profile photo with that of the legendary queen, without imagining what the consequences would be.

It seems that Katheryn Winnick was not well known outside of Vikings fans, especially in the audiovisual markets of countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, India. Furthermore, the majority of local populations are not able to distinguish the male or female gender of a person from an Italian name and it happens that many end up believing that the photo on Gianni's profile is that of the real owner of the account.

Gianni's daily life is thus shaken by a real bombardment of contact requests; on Messenger there are messages from men who want to enter into a relationship with the beautiful woman seen in the photo.

Something else, however, breaches the existence of Gianni and Elena, his partner, and equally in the existence of everyone, on a planetary level.

An epidemic breaks out in Wuhan, China: it is the beginning of a nightmare, gradual and silent.

For a while longer life flows according to the usual patterns, then the virus arrives in Italy. Gianni returns to work after a few days of leave: he suddenly finds himself in another world. Active monitoring of quarantines, tracing of infected people and their contacts will be his priority. He works more than before, much more than before. But a virus don't have a passport, it doesn't know national borders, much less regional or national ones; the virus spreads everywhere and the whole of Italy goes into lockdown.

Similar measures are common to many countries. With hundreds of millions of people confined to their homes, activities on social networks increase dramatically.

Gianni, alias Lagherta, receives countless messages: some harsh or vulgar, but some polite and kind. What would happen if I let those who contact me believe that I am really the woman in the photo? Gianni asks to himself. And so he begins to respond to individual interlocutors, deceiving them that he is, in fact, the attractive woman in the photo, gradually assuming a well-defined identity that is replicated with all contacts.

Maaz, Bismillah, Wahabi and Kishan will be seduced by the subtle game of illusions woven by Gianni who will complicate his "liquid crystal" spell by presenting himself to them in the guise of an Italian nurse, a lesbian who lives with her girlfriend, Torvi, actually the English actress Georgia Hirst.