“The carrion crow flaps wildly. Each blow is a poem of freedom denied, burned. Erased.”
First nominee for the 2026 Edoardo Kihlgren Award for a Debut Book. Be thrilled for the year-long wait!
The story begins in Lancashire, England. During her fieldwork, ornithologist Olga Leffman filmed a video of carrion crow, seemingly organized, lighting a fire on a rock face. Thanks to its spread via social media, the video quickly went viral worldwide, as did Olga’s fame. The wonder of how birds could have organized themselves to create fire (or rather, possessed fire with all its symbolic connotations) opens the door to insights into the role of humans in the world, our relationship with other animals, and ultimately to trivial conclusions.
Alongside the aforementioned main event, other stories intersect, those of ordinary people who, in their own way, try to live a normal daily life, unaware that they have given up ever-increasing amounts of freedom, only to find themselves trapped in cages from which it is seemingly impossible to escape. This is the case of a television personality seeking fame, locked in a house under the spotlight twenty-four hours a day; a Filipino girl forced by economic hardship to move to Italy and work as a domestic worker for a wealthy couple; and a young vigilante who responds to the video of the crows with inhumane acts, killing as many birds as possible.
An interesting plot, a partial sense of something already read that we were unable to identify, capable of opening the door to reflections on the emptiness of everyday actions, on how racing and the pursuit of false idols leads us to lose sight of the real meaning of the world and of life.
A divisive book. Some of our editorial staff loved it, praising its overall vision and intrinsic message, and some hated it, calling it one of the worst books they’ve ever read. Who’s right? It’s impossible to say; it’s up to you to read it and decide which side you take, but you’re certainly unlikely to be somewhere in the middle.
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Giacomo Ceccarelli, Cornacchie, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2025