Shambhala, capitale del bolscevismo magico

Edicions Excalibur, Tarragona (ISBN: 978-84-17793-01-2), 2018

In 1689, when the Europeans were struggling to explore the world, Arnau Falcó, a Catalan antiquarian and relic hunter from Barcelona, embarked on a quest to unveil the secrets of the East. Together with his Portuguese friend Silva, he will search for a mythical Tibetan artefact, trying to locate the legendary kingdom of Shambhala in the abode of snow. They will face innumerable perils, pursued by Manchu warriors and wicked Hindu Thuggees, fanatic worshippers of the fierce goddess Kali. An exotic adventure in the style of King Solomon's Mines or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that will take you into the heart of Asia, to the roof of the world. Join the so-called Catalan Falcon in his thrilling journey from Europe to Tsaparang, the ruined capital of the Guge Kingdom, thro India, the Sundarbans jungle, the Brahmaputra Basin, Bhutan and the Yarlung Valley.

Cosmopolitismes en Asie du Sud: Sources, itinéraires, langues (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), ed. C. Lefèvre, I. G. Zupanov & J. Flores. Paris: Éditions de l'EHESS (Collection "Purushartha" 33), 45-69

PMLA, 2022

In this essay I explore the secret history of one of the modern world’s most influential messianic utopias, tracing its origins to the United States in the 1920s. This utopia was forged and promoted by a group of inventive and mystically inclined Russian émigrés, and it was propagated through the so-called yellow press, the empire of sensationalistic and tawdry journalism led by William Randolph Hearst. The utopia in question is the story of the discovery of an enigmatic isolated land of philosophers and mystics hidden for centuries in the heart of Asia and visited only by a very select group of men. I consider this story as part of, in Ian Tyrrell’s words, “the peculiar tale of American Exceptionalism” and try to demonstrate that a contextualized reconstruction of this orientalist myth’s origins allows us to explore how (and by whom) American exceptionalism was narrativized and symbolized in the popular imagination from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s.

Studi d'italianistica nell'Africa Australe, 2010

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2020

The explorer Albert Grünwedel’s Tibetan maps of Shambhala are a controversial and contested part of the history of the exploration of the Silk Routes. In the early 1900s Albert Grünwedel collected material related to archaeological sites at Kucha and Turfan including several Tibetan maps of the region, which he published in 1920 in the book Alt-Kutscha. Soon after publication, doubts were raised about the authenticity of the maps, which presented Kucha and Qocho in terms of the mythical realm of Shambhala, and they are still widely considered to be either fabrications or delusions. Judging from internal references to historical figures of the late twelfth century, the maps may derive from sources as early as the thirteenth century, and can be linked to an increasing interest in the Kālacakra tantra and the realm of Shambhala described therein. I conclude that the Alt-Kutscha maps should not be regarded as fakes, nor as historically descriptive maps, but as guides for pilgrims that reimagined these sites in terms of the sacred geography of tantric Buddhism, with particular reference to the mythology of Shambhala.

Rereading Travellers to the East. Shaping Identities and Building the Nation in Post-unification Italy, 2022

In this introductory essay, the editors discuss the new perspectives offered by the volume on travel literature, the question of nation-building and the history of orientalism and oriental studies in Post-unification Italy. In particular, the authors describe the methodological potential of the concept of rereading and discuss the intertwinement between the (re)uses of travel literature and the processes of nation-building in Italy. Furthermore, the editors highlight the open character of the notion of “travellers” adopted in the essays and underline the importance of considering the specific character of orientalism and oriental studies in Italy, while briefly discussing the issue of female travel literature. Finally, they present the essays contained in the volume, suggesting different ways of reading them.

In recent years the cultural predicaments of Italy’s Oriental fantasies have attracted sustained critical attention: in the wake of this growing interest, the brilliant collection of essays gathered by Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti and Davide Trentacoste offers a much-welcomed contribution. Probing the multifaceted relations that linked modern Italy to Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Re-Reading Travellers to the East unearths a wide spectrum of intellectual experiences ranging from Giovanni Gentile’s involvement in the Istituto Italiano per il Medio e Estremo Oriente to Fascist attempts to (re)claim the “Italianness” of Marco Polo, from the exploits of colonial architecture in the Dodecanese islands to an overview of the (largely unmapped) history of Italian travel writing to Iran. A solid critical aim holds together the versatile mosaic of critical forays included in the volume: to deconstruct the multiple “re-readings” through which post-Unification Italy has sought to resuscitate the “mythical” halo of a tradition of medieval and early modern travelers.

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 1982

Annali di Ca' Foscari. Serie orientale, 2023

Annali di Ca’ Foscari.Serie orientale is the journal of the Department of Asian and North African Studies of Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Started in 1970, the journal became an Open Access resource in 2014. Its mission is to foster original and interdisciplinary research in the fields of Asian and North African Studies. Each annual issue features articles and reviews written by leading scholars whose contributions span across a vast array of topics. These can be gathered under four main headings: Linguistics, philology, and literature. Religions and philosophies. Archaeology and cultural heritage, visual and performing arts. History, economy, politics, and international relations.