Muri rossi

Eight Western men come to grips with China, a difficult nation to understand, with a history and a Party way more complex than what they thought. An ex American diplomat, a freelance journalist, a broker, a student from Bocconi University, an aspiring missionary, a retired general, a historian of literature and an Emilian aid-worker: they are the protagonists of extremely different experiences, ending up happily or with evident defeats. Being an expert connoisseur of Chinese culture and society, Stefano Cammelli describes the difficult path to penetrate into a distant world, a path where travellers will have to confront themselves not only with the surrounding reality, but also with their deepest solitudes. Entering into China – a country the author portrays in-depth with lucidity – is thus the beginning of a gradual isolation that might lead us into being “men of connection”, necessarily straddling two worlds, without being integral part of either.