Message from the Impossible

Einaudi Ragazzi – 2015

Series: Carta Bianca

Recommended reading age: 12+

Cover by: Iacopo Bruno – The World of Dot

ISBN 978-8866562375

 

A book made of mysteries

Buccia (Skin) is a fourteen-year-old radio ham fanatic. Radio waves are his world, both his freedom and his prison. Ever since he discovered them, he spends all his time intercepting messages and communications, together with his best friend, Jack. Brilliant, shy and enigmatic, Jack is a true sleuth of the airwaves. The two boys’ research focuses on space. It’s 1961, an epic year for space exploration. The United States and the USSR are vying with each other to conquer space in a scientific war based on daring missions and extraordinary inventions. One day they stumble across an incredible story: someone has recorded the last minutes of life of the first Soviet female astronaut, a “lost cosmonaut” who died in mysterious circumstances. The same day, Jack intercepts a message that he shouldn’t have heard and the same day he vanishes into thin air. It’s up to Buccia (Skin) to find out what has happened to his best friend. An amazing adventure that hovers between reality and fantasy and involves plots and spies, science and Sci fi, in the search for the only real truth there is: the one you believe.

Truth has many voices.

Some crash like thunderbolts, some breathe soft as hair. The echo of others can be heard in secret rooms where no one will ever be listening. Some arrive muttering in the night, fizzing in your ears and never leave you. I lived for these voices. I seized them and pursued them and, like a crocodile stalking its prey, I waited for them.

Then instead of predator I became prey, and the story of my life began.

Radio waves are invisible, and yet they surround and push against us like underwater currents. They weave through each other, lay over each other and then pull apart. They form phantom spider webs in which we become enmeshed and which we use to imprison others, with our words, our thoughts, the messages we wish to communicate, the secrets we want to hide.