[desertblues]

Thank you Book-worm-girl, that is a good find.

A hypothesis about this book is slowly forming in my mind.
Although the story is told by the Italian young man, nowhere is he referred to by his own name. Does he exists even?
He is captured at sea and when waiting for his captors to arrive, I get the feeling that he sees his whole life before him in a few seconds, just as is said to happen in the short seconds before dying.
For me, a decisive moment in the book is his capture. What happens at that instant and what is the effect on the mind of that young man?

Spoiler:

'I heard shrieks, footsteps rushing back and forth, an uproar going on outside, I knew that at any moment the book would be snatched from my hand, yet I wanted to think not of that but of what was written on its pages. It was as if the thoughts, the sentences, the equations in the book contained the whole of my past life which I dreaded to lose; while I read random phrases under my breath, as though reciting a prayer. I desperately wanted to engrave the entire volume on my memory so that when they did come, I would not think of them and what they would make me suffer, but would remember the colours of my past as if recalling the cherished words of a book I had memorized with pleasure.' (11)