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“Suffering frees the mind from thoughts. The total denial of the previous life. The only useful road to peace of mind.” Paola Venturi, from Bergamo, has a degree in pre-Roman, Roman and Magna Graecia archaeology, as well as in restoration architecture. Paola Venturi does not work in the art world, she puts her personal skills at the service of a context very distant from that of her university studies: prostitution. The resulting marriage has transformed her into a refined lover of sadomasochism, which she reworks in the form of complex sets that narrate mythological and biblical episodes. A combination so rare as to make it highly sought after on the market: customers come from all over Italy. During a performance, however, a strange thing happens. His eyes weep black tears. A phenomenon that is repeated again and this jeopardizes his professional activity. Worried, she asks for help from the family doctor, Ricolfi, who prescribes some control analyses. Paola reaches the Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo in the first days of March 2020, just as some military and medical contingents sent from Moscow enter the Orobic city, to support the local health personnel, under pressure due to the high number of victims found in the first stages of the pandemic. Here she meets an invalid girl, without a hand, and a handsome Russian boy, agitated and cautious who hands her a mysterious suitcase. Two causal encounters, which will have a fundamental impact on his life, changing it forever.


Chiara Domeniconi was born in Sassuolo, she runs a real estate company of which she is the sole director. In addition to several collections of poetry, he has also published several novels.

Administrative officer in a healthcare company, journalist and writer, Aldo Di Virgilio has published several novels and essays with Argentodorato Editore. Since 2021 he has also assumed the positions, again at Argentodorato Editore, of editor-in-chief and director of the cultural magazine Golden Section.

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