Tea with Mario Vitelli

About this book

While the world was sinking into a mysterious "orange rash" that altered the face of the sky, turning it cubical and cloaking cities in a sinister fiery hue, the souls in the "Refugees' Building" in Milan searched for their individual salvation, away from the din of the cosmic catastrophe. In this work, Ahmed Gomaa weaves complex human threads bringing together Ahmed Al-Qarmzi, the Gulf intellectual whose body bears the scars of torture chambers, and Lilaf Saeed, the Kurdish girl whom wars had displaced from Afrin to the cold alleys of Italy. This is no mere novel about exile, but a deep dissection of memory when it becomes a burden, and of revenge when one faces one's executioner by chance in a passing café in Duomo Square. Mystery seeps from behind the walls of the ancient building owned by Signor Mario Vitelli, that strange Italian old man who lends the place his eroded classical soul. Destinies intersect under the weight of a mysterious pandemic, revealing to us that prisons are not always behind bars, but may be.