The Most Beautiful Man in the World

On the Lazio coast of Coccia di Morto, Kimutai, a young African boy, enjoys the sun on the shore. The illusion of spending a day like everyone else is suddenly interrupted by a trivial misunderstanding; a chain of misunderstandings with the bathers will force Kimutai to find a new center of gravity in the precarious balance between reality and illusion.

Starting from the distance that separates him from asteroid 121019 Minodamato, the narrator embarks on an emotional journey in search of the many lives of his grandfather, Mino Damato: from reporting on some of the most devastating conflicts of the postwar era to the bright lights of 1980s television, and finally to his encounter with an HIV-positive orphan who would change his life forever. As fragments of family, personal and collective memory are pieced together, Mino’s boundless fascination with the cosmos emerges as the thread connecting a life that seems impossible to decipher.

In the forests of Fobbia, Claudio spends his days obsessively carving wood. Years earlier, his son disappeared in those same woods. The only thing of him left was the red shirt he was wearing, found under a pine tree. Ever since then, Claudio has been felling trees and carving them, convinced that his son must hide in there somewhere. Between truth and fantasy, Claudio’s story is intertwined with the tale of Pinocchio, here turned upside down.