La casa del mago

“You know how he is.” That phrase, repeated like a spell by Emanuele Trevi’s mother during his childhood, encapsulates the mystery that runs through this book: the elusive figure of a father as fascinating as he was inaccessible, because his son, in reality, never knew what he was like. Mario Trevi, the celebrated and extremely private Jungian psychoanalyst, was for many a “magician” capable of healing wounded souls; for his son, a distant, almost unreal presence. Growing up in his shadow meant learning early on to occupy a secondary role, to accept his father’s distractions and silences. After his death, an uncomfortable legacy: an apartment no one wants to buy, still imbued with the “twisted” lives that passed through its doors for decades in search of solace. Emanuele decides to move into that space and, in doing so, embarks on an intimate and literary investigation that translates into a descent into memory, an exploration of madness, and a dialogue between the living and the dead. Family memories, psychoanalysis, and some strange yet revealing episodes serve the author to unravel the enigma of a man who left nothing written about himself.