The Pharaoh Amasi, XXVI dynasty, was a man of power whose models were neither the ‘golpe’ nor the ‘lion’, animals whose characteristics a prince should manifest, according to Niccolò Machiavelli's famous metaphor, to govern well. Amasi's model was another animal, according to the happy intuition of Giovanni Mariotti: the eel. Shifty, elusive, shifty, non-linear, cautious, slippery, elusive, the Pharaoh Amasi interpreted the role of the powerful in a decidedly unconventional manner, drawing on his own background as a grave robber. Even in death, Amasi remained as elusive as he had been in life. Instead, Mariotti manages to grasp him with this delightful, exquisite narration. In Amasi's interpretation of power and in the exercise he made of it, Mariotti sees a way, however fragile and imperfect, to keep the civilised life of his subjects within the realm of possible happiness: those who lived in Egypt under Pharaoh Amasi were able to experience la douceur de vivre. A power that was not aggressive, exercised more behind the scenes with intelligence than in the limelight with proclamations, anti-expansionist and attentive to the expansionist drifts of others, quiet in time: a breeze of spring blows from this period, recounted by Mariotti as a cast from Herodotus. And it is, mysteriously, the same fragrant breeze that passes through the perfect sentences of this prose that breathes, oxygenates, produces lightness and well-being in the reader.

Giovanni Mariotti was born in Versilia in 1936 and lives in Milan. He worked for many years at various publishing houses. He has translated works by Itard, Gobineau, Schwob, Denon and Nerval. Furthermore, he has collaborated with several newspapers such as L'Espresso, Corriere della Sera and with the art magazine FMR. His works include with Adeplhi Storia di Matilde (2003) and Piccoli addii (2021), with Franco Maria Ricci La carpa del sogno (2017) and La gatta, Borges e il foxterrier (2020) and with La Nave di Teseo the recent I manoscritti dei morti viventi (2023).

Different animals stand out in the world created by Santangelo, a raw, violent world. A wild panther struggles against the submissiveness and carelessness of men, a family of tuna seek revenge before fierce hands that crush, two dogs fight clandestinely without meaning to, a boy still searches for 'tomorrow', together with his grandfather and his hen, his eyes full of hope and wonder as he admires the flying rocket still on the ground. One strolls between past and present, through ancient Rome, in the arena of the Colosseum, among fishing boats overlooking a sea full of blood, amidst floating cages and a sky full of stars.

Story titles: 'The Panther Who Lived Three Times'; 'The Pit'; 'Revenge of the Tuna'; 'The Promise of Return'.

Essay: 'Why write fairy tales today'.

Evelina Santangelo is a writer, editor and teacher of Storytelling Techniques. For Einaudi she published the short stories "L'occhio cieco del mondo" (The Blind Eye of the World) and several novels, among them: "Il giorno degli orsi volanti" (The Day of the Flying Bears, 2005), "Senzaterra" (Landless, 2008) and "Da un altro mondo" (From Another World, 2018; Book of the year 2018 Fahrenheit, Rai Radio 3; Premio Feudo di Maida 17th edition; Superpremio Sciascia-Racalmare 30th edition; Premio Pozzale Luigi Russo 67th edition). His latest book was published by Einaudi in 2023 "Il sentimento del mare" (The feeling of the sea; Costa Smeralda Prize). Again for Einaudi, he edited Terra matta by Vincenzo Rabito, translated "Firmino" by Sam Savage and "Rock 'n' Roll" by Tom Stoppard. His articles have appeared in national newspapers, blogs and weeklies. He collaborates with the weekly L'Espresso.

In his Materiali onirici di un somarello marino ("Dream Materials of a Seahorse"), the author gives us what is so far his most mysterious book, an unexpected underwater tale. With fairytale-like movements, aquatic beings meet and turn away: a blue goldfish, a Pippocampo hippocampus, sponges, crabs, prawns such as Lucio, and an enigmatic seahorse named Italia. These beings move through scenery of abandoned wrecks, seabeds, tuffaceous stones, corroded metal railings mixed with molluscs, and corals. However, the tale has a painful soul, every character swim in a nightmare full of dangers (including us humans with our nets and aquariums), and nobody is master of his own direction. This is an important text to penetrate the writing of this narrator of ours, a Ligurian of hinterland and steep stones who here descends directly below the surface of the sea and shows us in the form of an apologue what moves beneath the earth's crust of stories.

Marino Magliani was born in a Ligurian valley and has spent most of his life outside Italy. Today he lives between Liguria and the Dutch coast, where he writes and translates. Writer, translator, comic book scriptwriter, his latest novel is Il bambino e le isole (66thand2nd, 2023), while his latest translation is Islario fantastico argentino (TARKA editions, 2023). Perhaps, he would never have written "The Speech of a Hippocampus" if he had not called himself Marino.

Through the story of the tarantella, a passionate and ancient dance of celebration, courtship and healing, Gilda Policastro engages in a pressing exploration and reflection on her own evolution, a cultural, sentimental, sexual and existential evolution. In La ragnatela, each sentence encapsulates and demonstrates the writer's skill and intelligent mastery. Because it is the way it is written (the rhythm, the astonishing mixture of lexicons derived from spheres that are in themselves distant, which in her hands collide and flourish in the same paragraph, the essentiality of the writing) that makes the text astonishing: how the author managed to find an unexpected USB port in our cerebral circumvolutions is unknown, but the fact remains that the download we manage to make of so many third-contents is as quick as a spider bite.

Gilda Policastro has published, among others, the novels Il farmaco (Fandango, 2010), Cella (Marsilio, 2015), La parte di Malvasia (La Nave di Teseo, 2021) and the poetry books Non come vita (Aragno, 2013), Inattuali (Transeuropa, 2016) and La distinzione (Giulio Perrone, 2023). A lecturer in Italian Literature, he collaborates with the Molly Bloom Academy of Creative Writing in Rome and the cultural websites Le parole e le cose. Literature and Reality and Snaporaz. He has published essays on contemporary authors, including L'ultima poesia: scritture anomale e mutazioni di genere dal secondo Novecento a oggi (Mimesis, 2021).

In order to finally solve the chronic adversity of Italian train delays on the scheduled timetable, an ingenious solution is found: timetables are abolished by law!
With a weakened, seemingly benevolent writing style, Andrea Vitali sets up a situation with fabulous tones that seems suspended in time. The apologue flows amusingly, with a grain of madness, dislocated from factual reality with millimetric precision, just enough (not a step too far) to welcome the reader into a pastime of blissful escapism.
Storia di treni, ministri e minestrine encloses a core of merciless, radical, bitter satire on our country in an operation of refined realism. Only by fully mastering the art of storytelling is it possible to hang an entire story from an initial paradox that continually generates others, until a mocking, circular closure. This dystopian but backwards-looking Italy (trains, yes, but with a 19th-century flavour, one might say) is the contraption that Vitali gives us to sing along with him this small, devastating, surrendered, light-hearted taunting about our country. He does so with skill, amusement and cruelty.

Andrea Vitali was born in Bellano, on Lake Como, in 1956, where he has always lived, practising as a doctor until 2013 and then devoting himself solely to writing. His debut novel was Il procuratore (Camunia Editore) in 1990. His most recent titles are Genitori cercasi (Einaudi, 2024) and Sua eccellenza perde un pezzo (Garzanti, 2024). He currently collaborates with Il Fatto Quotidiano.

It can be said that Margherita Loy's mother tongue is directly literary Italian. In these three new short stories, the main elements are the writing's ability to be simple yet open up sudden complexities, the play of references between past and present, the tension between the narrated scene and the one seen that liquefies in the experience of the word, the rarefaction that is evoked with clear and precise terms, the reverberations of infinite readings that have always been inhabited, Bassan reflexes, the thought that plays with words. And above all, the presence of the emblematic object that catalyses lost stories towards itself and makes their narration available.
We have three jewels in this collection. Each encloses a world, preserves relationships and affections, unrepeatable lives. But their essence as jewels reverberates on worlds, relationships, affections and lives with the value of their stones, gold, pearls.
Margherita Loy is a narrator who has a personal respect for the stories she tells. This is a character trait that permeates her prose and embellishes it, although the writer carefully keeps her razor sharp and her burin sharp in the face of pain and suffering.

Margherita Loy was born in Rome in 1959 and has lived in the Lucca countryside for many years. She has conducted programmes on books for the broadcaster Videomusic, cultural programmes on Rai Radio Tre, translated books for Astrolabio-Ubaldini Editore and published short stories in the magazine 'Paragone Letteratura' and in the anthology Parole apparecchiate (2011) published by Trasciatti Editore. He has created art books for children for Gallucci Editore: La cameretta di van Gogh (2015, 2023); Magritte. This is not a book (2021); Pop al pomodoro (2021). For Zona Franca Edizioni he published the collection of short stories V.O.L.A., Vino, olio, latte e acqua (2013), for Atlantide Edizioni the novels Una storia ungherese (2018), La dinastia dei dolori (2020) and Dio a me ha dato la collina (2022), while for the publisher Barta the novel Delia o mattino di giugno (2023) was published. He currently maintains a literature and art blog on Il Fatto Quotidiano.