‘In the spirit of the Big Dipper’ by Massimo Maggiari

Charged with investigating the request for help found in the bag, Lieutenant Joseph Castelrut undertakes a dangerous mission towards the peaks, accompanied by Sergeant Dorives and the inscrutable Friar Ginepro. The story has its roots in family memory: Castelrut’s father had participated in the siege of Vindobona in 1683, and that border legacy now seems to weigh on his son’s fate. Together, the three travelers will have to reveal the fate of Assur, a mysterious woman who has come from the East and is threatened by dark forces led by the Master of the Great Shadow. In this context, Castelrut experiences a radical internal change: the abandonment of rigid service protocols in favor of a profound spiritual connection with the peaks, transcending the rigidity of the war report to become a mythical narrative of interiority. Along the way, the military mission evolves into an initiatory journey in which the mountain ceases to be a setting to become a living and speaking character, giving life to a true “alpine magical realism”.

The text moves on deliberately vague space-time coordinates, where the toponymy becomes creative by fusing the Habsburg peaks with echoes of the Ligurian Alps. It is in this suspension that the Buzzatian model clearly emerges: as in the Tartar Desert, the story is pervaded by a metaphysical expectation and by the confrontation with the unknown. At the center of the story, therefore, there is not only the typical action of the adventure novel, but the possibility of healing the soul through listening to the pulsations of the earth, in a constant dialogue between the Western rationality of the imperial officer and the magical wisdom of the East embodied by the Tatar shaman.

It is a work that explores the invisible and the sense of historical precariousness, where the “rhythm of the drum” becomes the heartbeat of tradition in opposition to modern nihilism, acting as a necessary bridge between the memory of the twentieth century and a new sacredness of the living. Maggiari’s writing, dense and poetic, vibrates with a metaphysical tension that invites us to rediscover the Anima Mundi between ice and rock.

The cover is signed by Ivo Milazzo, master of watercolor and co-creator of Ken Parker. Known internationally for having signed unforgettable interpretations of icons such as Tex and for his prestigious forays into the classics of literature and auteur cinema, Milazzo links the volume with his iconic trait to the great narrative tradition of adventure and exploration.

Massimo Maggiari, born in Genoa-Nervi, lives in Charleston (South Carolina) and is Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies at the College of Charleston. A scholar of Orphic literature and anthropology, he is among the main exponents of the Mythmodernist Poets movement. He is an expert in Arctic cultures and in particular in Greenland, where he has made numerous research trips, also arriving on the island via the new direct air links from the United States, which are redesigning the geographies of the contemporary Arctic. Already winner of the Lerici Pea and Montale Fuori Casa awards, he has explored Arctic and Mexican shamanism in successful volumes such as ‘Al canto delle whale’ (Giunti, 2018), ‘Reading in the heart. The secrets of a curandero’ (Giunti, 2022), ‘Northwest Passage’ (Corriere della Sera, 2021) and ‘In the heart of the Northwest Passage’ (Meltemi, 2024). His writing blends anthropological research and travel narrative in a constant exploration of the spiritual meaning of experience.