ALBERTO ANGELA, THE LAST DAY OF ROME. JOURNEY IN THE CITY OF NERONE LITTLE BEFORE THE BIG FIRE (HarperCollins, pp. 352, 18.50 euros) -
"When I write it's as if I were directing and the pen is my camera. I don't prepare anything, I always start in a bloody way, because I want to tell the big story through small stories, that is people, using the 5 senses ": these are the secrets of Alberto Angela's" cinematographic "writing, which he himself revealed live on Facebook on December 17 to the booksellers of 8 bookshops in the network of #LibridaAsporto, on the occasion of the release of "The last day of Rome", published by HarperCollins and the first of a trilogy dedicated to the emperor Nero.
Reconstructing for the first time the great fire of 64 AD, an episode that changed the geography of Rome and our history forever, Angela therefore presents to her large audience of admirers once again a book that combines the most rigorous historical knowledge with more engaging narrative: "I tried to make the book I always dreamed of finding in the bookstore, but I'm just the one who scores the goal, next to me there is a great working group that has done a long historical research", he explained, "I believe that uniting the present with the past is the basis of disclosure. We need to make people understand immediately what we are talking about, so that young people are also attracted".
With the usual talent of being able to update even what might seem "dusty" or just a matter for enthusiasts, the famous scientific popularizer as well as paleontologist and naturalist has made use of the contribution of historians and experts in meteorology and fire, to tell in this first episode of the trilogy the hours preceding the catastrophe, describing the society of the time and the urban characteristics;
the second and third books will instead focus on the narrative of the actual fire and on the still controversial figure of Nero.
So this first volume immediately catapults the reader into ancient Rome, precisely on the night of Saturday 18 July 64 AD: in the summer heat, Vindex and Saturninus, two vigiles on duty that day, one a veteran and the other a recruit, walk around the streets trying to control and eliminate the many sources of danger that exist in a city mostly made of wood and where fire is used for everything.
Next to them, the reader will discover the daily life of Rome and its inhabitants, among smells, noises and atmospheres described with incredible realism.
"The idea was to recover the charm of a lost world: being in the same place 2000 years later, I was able to understand things that the inhabitants of the time perceived. After all, Rome today has a climate similar to then, the cuts of light they are the same and there is the same air that Nero breathed ", he said," it was like giving life to an ancient find, even the names I chose in the book are true. Certainly being in Rome has helped me a lot and even the last 30 years of work: the world was different but people were like us, with the same emotions ".
