Translation by: Claudia Cozzi
Year of publication: 2022


Synopsis
Hydraulic engineer turned investigative journalist, Frank Westerman returns to his roots in this literary reportage dedicated to "major water works." Hydraulic Diptych recounts the parallel destinies of the Vajont dam and Venice's MOSE, pairing them with those of two dams in Normandy, France, whose destruction is planned to allow salmon to return upstream the Sélune River. Engineering is, for Westerman, the starting point for a narrative around life and man's attempts to master its flows, becoming an observatory to recount the tensions and social conflicts that major works catalyze. Weaving a plot from which emerge stories of speculation and myths of progress, struggles for environmental justice, and powerful images of floods, the two texts thus transform water and major hydraulic works into windows for reading the contemporary world. Curious and never dogmatic, Westerman gives us a writing that, like a salmon, always swims against the current.


Other information
Series: Mude
Pages: 96
Language: Italian
ISBN: 9791280930026
First publication: Em. Querido’s Uitgeverij, 2022