by Paola Tonussi

Boonrod is a creature born on the street in Thailand and destined for a vagabond’s life. Everything changes for him thanks to a chance meeting with the boy Atid, who gives him love and a real home. A perfect mutual understanding soon grows between them, a friendship coloured by a sort of nostalgia, suspended, as in a fairy-story, between the enchantment of childhood and the lush beauty of the tropical landscape. This happy interlude comes to an abrupt end when Boonrod, once more on his own, must confront pain and anguish, cruelty and death. Salvation comes at the eleventh hour and he will be given the chance of starting over again, with a new life. “Paola Tonussi, with her writer’s sensibility and sure poetic touch, has succeeded in rendering not only the extraordinary love story that those who share their lives with a dog know well; but also – and astonishingly – to describe through the eyes of ‘man’s best friend’ himself the suffering and atrocity of the DMT, that every year is responsible in China and Korea for the massacre of millions of innocent and vulnerable creatures, snared, tor­tured and killed to finish on the tables of the gros­sest form of oriental traditionalism. Paola’s is then a book that scores doubly. Because she extracts from the devotion that has always uni­ted men and their dogs a unique voice, that ana­tomizes the full range of unconditional affection, the courage of bearing witness and the hope of salvation”. (Maria Grazia Filippi, journalist) “a poetic and terrible tale” (Sergio Frigo, writer)

Also available in Italian