“Etna – Traveling pages” by Rosario Battiato with drawings by Fabrizio Foti – Books

“Etna – Traveling pages” it is a hybrid between guide and magazine – it hosts stories, numbers, tales, visions, drawings, real and imaginary paths – with the shape of a lava tile and a cover veined by the fire of the volcano. The volume, published by Cirnauti, an imprint of Lettera Ventidue Edizioni, is written by Rosario Battiato with drawings by Fabrizio Foti. From tomorrow, 17 April, it arrives in physical bookshops and online stores: it is a paperback book to read, collect and above all to leaf through like a breviary to be tempted by the countless faces of the most animated volcano in Europe.

An atypical guide aimed at locals and tourists because it combines the rigor of information with cards, data, maps and graphics with imaginative trajectories to discover and rediscover an Etna far from the usual tourist routes, between the experiences of the locals and the popular tales that let antiquity emerge of a volcano inhabited by satanaxis, monsters, creatures, aliens and yetis. For a sulphurous and imaginative Etna, the author also tells of another extraordinarily real and concrete one which is articulated along the paths and the exploration of the caves, as well as in the incredible Etna landscape. In these parts, the compelling stories of the entrepreneurial adventures that have seen the volcano transform into a glass of wine or become the land of frost for the production of granita emerge, without forgetting the vocation of being a land of choice for editorial adventures.

And between a granita and a mushroom risotto, “Etna” collects traces of the mountains left by the great authors who crossed it even if only metaphorically – Marinetti, Le Guin, Corti, Sciascia, Battiato, Dalla – or cited through one of its animals more representative, like the cirneco described by Curzio Malaparte.

Rosario Battiato He is a journalist and scholar of popular fantasy. He cured Tales of Italian ghosts for Il Saggiatore and wrote, among others, Fantastic creatures of Sicilya for The Palindrome. His stories and articles have appeared in magazines and volumes. He lives in Catania and shares his daily life with three strange beings: his wife Agnese and his daughters Amelia and Leda.

Fabrizio Foti He is an architect and professor at the SDS of Architecture in Syracuse, University of Catania. He lives in Sicily, where he carries out the daily practice of research through drawing and painting. Already illustrator, in this same series, of Ortigia And Palermo. He also published with Cirnauti Tracts of the Mediterranean, an illustrated book with some of the fish species that proliferate in the seas of Italy. For him, Mediterranean fish have always been food for the body and the spirit.