A young man plunges into student life, in flight from an overbearing father, in search of an identity of his own making. He is like everyone else in his quest for a future he cannot yet understand. His experiences, often comic, always innocently human, are an exploration of the concept of boundaries. But in choosing to study in Trieste, a city of many-layered histories and ethnicities, a city of brilliant sunshine and ferocious gales, he finds that life, and love, throw him more questions than answers. It is a tale of Everyman, but more than that: in the hands of Diego Marani, author of the celebrated New Finnish Grammar, this wry and affecting novel leads the reader on a nostalgic and thought-provoking journey made wholly individual by its evocation of place ? the celestial city of Trieste. 'I did not think that one could weep for a city. But at that time I did not know that cities are women, one can fall in love with them and never forget them.' AUTHOR: Diego Marani was born in Tresigallo, a village near Ferrara in 1959. In March 2021 he left his job as the officer in charge of Cultural Diplomacy at the European Union in Brussels to become the director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris. He writes columns for various European newspapers about current affairs in Europanto, a language that he has invented. His collection of short stories in Europanto, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot has been published by Dedalus. In Italian he has published twelve books, including the highly acclaimed trilogy New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus 2011), The Last of the Vostyachs (Dedalus 2012) and The Interpreter (Dedalus 2016) which have found worldwide success. God's Dog, a very different detective novel was published by Dedalus in 2014.