From the Paesi Edizioni series, which reads today’s crises through the urban trajectories that reveal global tensions, come two other titles too: “Damascus” and “Kharkiv”
Greenland as a place of encounter and nature, a territory now at the centre of geopolitical debate because of Donald Trump — who first announced he wanted to take it over, then to buy it by offering one million dollars per inhabitant — is the latest title in the literary reportage series Città geopolitiche. These are not guidebooks, but narrative essays specifically devoted to global cities: symbolic places of our time whose influence and international connections have grown to such an extent that understanding them has become essential. Written by leading voices in geopolitics and international relations, the series offers a set of passionate urban portraits by journalists, analysts and travellers of different generations and perspectives. Thoughtful works, accessible in tone and highly original in content.
The cities are the protagonists, understood as living, dynamic organisms that are born, develop and, like human beings, change in relation to their environment and the vital space around them.
They are places selected for their vocation and geopolitical relevance, as frontiers of socio-cultural change. They are protagonists of political tensions and crises, outposts of new economic routes, or global laboratories of development.
Nuuk, in Greenland, is one of the most original works in the series, above all because of the exceptional nature of its geographical context and the strong geopolitical significance contained in this territory. The so-called “kingdom of ice” has long been perceived as an unresolved enigma and, at the same time, as a fascinating frontier: a place that has fuelled the imagination of explorers and navigators in search of new connections between continents.
It is within this scenario that the famous myth of the Northwest Passage takes shape: a maritime route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago capable of linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. For centuries, this route was pursued as a strategic and commercial objective, especially by Europeans who, between the late fifteenth and the twentieth century, repeatedly attempted to identify a navigable passage north and west of the American continent. It was the English who coined the expression “Northwest Passage”, helping to consolidate its symbolic as well as geographical value.
The route was finally completed successfully in 1906 by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who achieved the feat aboard the Gjöa, a small herring fishing vessel specially adapted for Arctic navigation. The journey lasted three years and ran from Baffin Bay to the Bering Strait, also allowing for important scientific observations, including the determination of the position of the northern magnetic pole. At the end of the expedition, Amundsen reached the city of Circle, Alaska, from where he sent a telegram announcing the success of what had until then been considered one of the most ambitious challenges in the history of exploration.
This is an area of the planet rich in oil and rare earths, a crossroads for new commercial maritime routes as the glaciers progressively melt, and one over which the influence of China and Russia is increasingly strong. The authors, Luca Sebastiani, a journalist at Domani, and Leonardo Parigi, coordinator of the magazine Osservatorio Artico, have gathered first-hand testimonies and exclusive interviews, recounting the spirit of the Inuit, who, after a long and troubled period of Danish rule, have no intention of handing themselves over to a new colonising power. The wrinkles on Inuit faces are as deep as the stories of this land. With its snow-covered mountains and traditional Nordic houses in vivid colours, it seems to be yielding to the advance of progress and modernisation.
A “non-guide” that ventures into this magical land, including its curiosities: the fact, for instance, that Greenland has fewer than two hundred kilometres of roads. People travel by plane, ship, ferry or helicopter, even by snowmobile, and in some areas still by real sledges drawn by dogs. But land connections — roads, let alone railways — do not exist. Here in Nuuk, you cannot get into a car and drive away from the city, because the roads either come to an end or at most form loops. Here too, the reasons are simple: the island’s climate and geography. And its uniqueness.
The other two titles, also released in February, are Damascus and Kharkiv. Damascus lies between an extended journalistic reportage and a passionate travel diary, rich in historical depth, and is the result of author Lorenzo Trombetta’s deep knowledge of the city and of Syria. Trombetta is an Arabist, journalist and writer. “Kharkiv”, meanwhile, comes four years after the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the Ukrainian-born writer Yaryna Grusha tells the story of one of the cities most heavily hit by the Kremlin’s missiles, on the front line of a war that is not only military, but also cultural and identity-based.
Cover image: © 2019 Mathias Berlin/Shutterstock
