Between a geographical novel and an environmental investigation: «The Fish Men» with Wu Ming 1

In the past decade I decided to look at my homeland with fresh eyes: the Basso Ferrarese, and more broadly the Po Delta and the Upper Adriatic. These are peculiar territories, unlike the rest of the country, and today they have become a hotspot of the climate crisis for many reasons. My idea was to narrate the land by treating it as a true character, endowed with its own agency. Through site visits and archival research—and conversely, archival discoveries verified on the ground—together with interviews and field recording , the novel began to take shape. The story unfolds across different eras, with numerous shifts in time, yet it maintains a unity of place, though an expansive one: the area stretching from Ferrara to the sea. «The Fish-Men» was published in October 2024. I wanted it to be as outward-reaching as possible, a book that constantly pushes beyond the boundaries of its pages by raising questions. In this sense, the writing process—and now the debate the work is sparking, the encounters it is triggering—has from the very beginning been part of a broader weave of geographical inquiry and political ecology. At DIG Festival, I will share this work.

Wu Ming 1