Bøger af Ermanno Libenzi

"The Venice Tales" is an unusual fantasy novel, brimming with characters, places and historical periods. Its narration follows several different plots, all running together towards the end of the story in a whirlwind of fun. This story has the obvious purpose of amusing its readers, yet its present-day characters, as well as its historical and mythological ones, also provide an opportunity for understanding the spirit of the city and learning about the millenary history of the Republic of Venice, its great sailors, explorers and merchant-adventurers, its famous, world-renowned artists and architects. Venice isn't simply the most beautiful city in the world. It's also the greatest open air theatre, an astonishing stage where an animated crowd of characters gives life every day to an improvised comedy, as it happened in the centuries-old form of theatre called "Commedia dell'Arte". Through this book, young readers will better understand the heroic accomplishments of the courageous people who built their city in the water and mud of a lagoon, and despite this, succeeded in making an absolute masterwork out of an impossible task. The story begins with the arrival in Venice, as tourists, of a carrier pigeon, and an aristocratic English family, Lady Matilda, Lord Edward, their daughter Gea, and their dog, Alvin, a high-spirited fox-terrier. Unknown to anyone, Gea and Alvin are magically able to talk to each other. The little dog is the one who sets the whole story in motion. Everything stemmed from the fact that Alvin is terribly tired of living a lapdog existence amongst luxury, leisure, velvet pillows and gourmet foods. So when he meets a group of wandering mongrels, dirty but free and sprightly, in a little square of Venice, he hears the call of the wild, and suddenly decides to run away with them. With Alvin's flight, the peaceful holiday of Gea and her parents turns into a wild, and often fun, hunt of the fugitive. The chase along Venice's maze of lanes, up and down its four hundred bridges, will lead them to discover the enchanting beauty of the city. Many other characters will gradually be introduced to the reader, and their lives and stories will mingle in a dizzying merry-go-round of events. Three international thieves will make an entrance following Lady Matilda with a desire to steal her jewels; Gea will make friends with Gianni, a boy of her own age, son of a famous Italian film director; Gianni, in turn, diving into the sea of Venice, will have an exciting encounter with Neptune, god of the sea. We will also meet a gondolier, a carrier pigeon, the talking statues of the Winged Lion, symbol of Venice, the Archangel Gabriel and Bartolomeo Colleoni, the Captain General of the Venetian army. At the end of the book, all the characters will come together in St Mark's square, concluding the story in a grand finale. FOR YOUNG READERS AGED 8-13

"The Planet of Nuts" is an ecological science-fiction book for young readers written in 1969, and published in Italy, France and Japan. It has now been published in 2017 for the first time in the English language. At the end of the Sixties, computers, called "electronic brains", were cumbersome devices, as large as side-by-side refrigerators. At the time, in fact, we were at the dawn of the Computer Age. The author of this book, basing himself on the scientific data of the time, but using above all his own imagination, envisions what life on Earth will be like in the not-so-distant future. Our ill-fated planet, by then, will have been plundered of its natural resources by its own inhabitants, will have been polluted, turned into desert, smoked, overheated, plasticized, nuclearized, drilled, and deforested, in an irrepressible race towards self-destruction. All the classic ingredients of science fiction can be found in this book: spaceships, futuristic cities, artificial farms, robots, mutants, and aliens. With a small difference. This time the aliens are not inhabitants of a faraway planet that have landed here in order to invade us. In this story we are the aliens, and the planet that we want to conquer is theirs. The book does not, in any case, relate these events with apocalyptic language. On the contrary, its narrative style is completely different: light, Ironic, often satiric, and biting at times. Its approach is humorous and understated, the story told with placidity, as though the insane exploits of a people, the Earthlings, were paradoxically normal. Man is, in fact, a living paradox. He is an angel and - at the same time - a devil, a genius and a fool, creator and destroyer. He is the most intelligent being on Earth, and nevertheless, a nutcase. To tell the truth, this book is dedicated - but only jokingly - to the crazy side of humans, to those who, instead of loving and respecting their wonderful blue planet, do everything possible, day after day, to transform it into an inhabitable place. But seriously speaking, the aim of this book is to remind everyone, nuts and sane people alike, of one certainty: in the universe there are more or less seven hundred quintillions of planets - an inconceivable number - but only one Earth. So, don't forget it; Earth is our one and only planet, and if we destroy or plunder it, we'll end up homeless Though written many years ago, the Planet of Nuts is, surprisingly, very relevant to our lives today. Actually, it is more pertinent than ever, because the nuts who plunder the Earth are still numerous and powerful, and refuse to understand that enough is enough. This book has received awards from "Futuribles International" and "Fondation Claude-Nicolas Ledoux", centers of future studies based in Paris.