Title Details

"An Italian Count goes to Amazonia because of his curiosity and becomes a keen photographer, ethnographer, collector, dictionarist, translator, myth researcher, geographer, even a jurist. Such a film-worthy screenplay has Ermanno Stradelli as the main character, who crossed the Atlantic with his numerous refined practices of European worship to get immersed in the passionate and sinuous depths of the Amazonia rainforest in 1879. To honor the 90th anniversary of his death, the book 'The Only Possible Life: itineraries of Ermanno Stradelli in Amazonia', organized by the researcher Livia Raponi, consisting of essays of Brazilian and Italian specialists from different areas.

One of the most emblematic characters of the Italian-Brazilian scientific world of the last century – standing between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – Stradelli studied and recorded in photos, maps and dictionaries the indigenous people, languages and geography of Amazonia. This work enabled Brazilians and Italians to know the peculiarities of the region. The Count was commited to getting in touch with the indigenous cultures of the Upper Rio Negro and to disseminate their original expressions, becoming an indispensable reference for anthropology, languages and Amerindian literature researchers.

The book also has a selection of photographs and maps made by the traveler from archives of the Italian Geographic Society. "