Choices, ambition and regret in the book ‘If you open your eyes’ by Roberto Di Sante

Andy Fontana dies on the stage of a provincial Italian theater and wakes up in his Beverly Hills villa, next to a stranger. He has everything: success, money, women. There is a pain, however, in his head that torments him and brings to light a life that should no longer exist. When he was Andrea Fontana, he lived in Palombara, a town on the outskirts of Rome, acting in a company of friends. A boy who dreamed of becoming a famous actor and was in love with Anna. A pure and absolute love, between faith and Shakespeare. A sweet and true future that he had torn apart in order to break through. Yet the past never stops coming back, more real than the present. Between visions and memories that span thirty-five years and half the world – from Palombara to Los Angeles, from Rome to New York, to the beach of Deauville – Andy is forced to deal with what he has lost. Until a shocking encounter.

Journalist, author, marathon runner, cinema and music enthusiast, Roberto Di Sante with Ultra published ‘Corri. Dall’inferno a Central Park’, Argentario prize 2020 and Alda Merini prize 2024, which has become a successful theater show directed by Ferdinando Ceriani, with Sebastiano Gavasso and Giovanna Famulari, on tour for five years. In 2019, again for Ultra, ‘Tre’ was released, awarded the following year at the Città di Grosseto – Amori sui generis literary competition. In November 2025 the magazine ‘Runner’s World’ proclaimed him a “running icon” for having inspired the rebirth, not only in sport, of many people through the pages of Corri.