Le regole dello Shangai

She is a young gypsy girl who has run away from her family to escape an arranged marriage to an elderly man. He is a watchmaker who is camping on the border and welcomes her into his tent. Their encounter marks the beginning of an understanding built on night-time conversations about men and life, an exchange of knowledge and visions – she believes in destiny, in signs, in the god of things, she trained a bear and loved him as her best friend; he who feels like a cog in the machine of the world and who interprets that world according to the rules of Shangai, as if playing were a way to bring order to chaos. An understanding that will last a long time, even from a distance, and will end up changing both their lives: a deviation in the game, a stick that moves. Erri De Luca sets out on little-travelled paths, on lives that knot and unravel. He does so with a dense and light story, where every word reveals deeper meanings, every sentence is a gateway first and foremost to oneself, and in doing so he invites us to a calm, patient and lucid game, in which even an imperceptible move can change the course of the game.