The stories of Corto Maltese are not just adventures, but invitations to overcome appearances with the fantasy of the visions that arise from the drawings of Hugo Pratt.
Marco Steiner tried to tell what lies behind the images, fantastic journeys that start from real itineraries, an invitation to travel free beyond time and space. Words intertwined with the magical realism of José Muñoz, the jazz of his black drawings and the silences that tell another species of Tango in the courtyard of a tire shop in San Isidro or the desolate voyage of sailors crossing a possible Corto Maltese. There is no precise time, but there are moments, detours, and changes of course, to travel with Mirages of Memory in a world of adventures. In an Argentine Tango is said: “Today you will enter my past“. There are three times in these words: present, past and future. Mirages of memory is a bit like this, a future of emotions, visions and memories of hypnotic itineraries.
The presentation of the book will take place next Thursday, October 25th, 7 pm, at the Sozzani Foundation bookshop, in Corso Como 10.
The authors
José Muñoz, born in Buenos Aires in 1942, lives and works in Milan. Driven by an early passion for drawing and comics, he studied with Hugo Pratt and debuted at the age of twenty with the police series “Precinto 56”. In 1972, he moved to Europe, first to London then to Barcelona and Italy. He has designed a long series of characters, stories and covers, including “Pirates” by Conan Doyle and “Lo Straniero” by Albert Camus. In 2017, he won the Yellow Kid award at the master of comics in Lucca.
Marco Steiner, born in Rome in 1956, is a writer, photographer and sailor. He lives between Rome and New York. Doctor, he met Hugo Pratt in the late eighties, because he gave him philological research to give reality to the events of Corto Maltese. In 1996, he completed for Einaudi the novel “Corte Sconta dictates Arcana” left unfinished by Pratt and in 2006 he wrote the novel “L’ultima Pista”, an ideal continuation of “Tango”. In 2016, he wrote “Oltremare”, a finalist for the Salgari Award.
