Notes on a Shipwreck

A moving firsthand account of migrant landings on the island of Lampedusa that gives voice to refugees, locals, and volunteers while also exploring a deeply personal father-son relationship. Lampedusa, from l pas, the rock eroded by the elements, which endures in the vastness of the open sea. Or Lampedusa, from lamp s, the torch that shines in the dark, which overcomes darkness. On this island, the southernmost part of Italy, between Africa and Europe, Davide Enia looks in the faces of those who arrive and those who wait, and tells the story of an individual and collective shipwreck. On one side, a multitude in motion, which crosses entire nations and then the Mediterranean Sea under conditions beyond any imagination. On the other, to try to welcome it, a handful of men and women on the border of an era and a continent. In the middle is the author himself, to tell of what actually happens at sea and on land, and the failure of words in the attempt to understand the present paradoxes. He reveals the emotional consequences of this touching and disconcerting reality, especially in his relationship with his father, a recently retired doctor, who agrees to travel with him to Lampedusa. Finding themselves together to witness the public pain of those who land and those who save them from death, alongside the private pain of his uncle's illness, pushes them to reinvent their relationship, to forge a new and unprecedented dialogue that replaces the silences of the past.