Polenta and goanna

In a mysterious castle in Libya, the narrator stumbles on some unexpected vestiges of the past which inspire him to recount his extraordinary experiences in Australia. The result is the story of a meeting of two cultures — Italian and Aboriginal — and of the emotions aroused by his chance encounters with people and places that are the vivid, but fragile, proof of that meeting. In the search for a distant reality, which resonates strongly with present day issues, magical storytelling is interwoven with sociological curiosity, historical reconstruction and notes on a journey. The reader is swept up in an engrossing narrative that explores fascinating truths about Italian migrants to Australia during the last Gold Rush, from the close of the 19th century across the first decades of the 20th.