The corner of the world that awaits us

“When you arrive in the corner of the world,
please be quiet.
Stop all communication, forget time,
and begin to understand this place
at the same time unknown and familiar.
Some people get there by dreaming.
Others when they read a book.
Some find themselves playing,
or when they enter a cinema.
There is a corner of the world that awaits each of us.”

Jimmy Liao, after having published over 50 illustrated books and having quickly become the most famous author of illustrated books in Asia, invites us to look for our corner of the world: that special place where we can feel good, reconnect with our interiority, with the world of dreams and desires. In the corner of the world, we will be able to remember our children’s games or forgotten fairy tales. Going back in time and fixing irreparable and lost mistakes… In our corner of the world, there is nothing impossible.

Just recently published in Italy, In a corner of the world is one of Liao’s most profound, symbolic and lyrical albums. A masterpiece for its depth, for the unique ability that Liao has to give voice to our inner world, to question us and make us dream, through his poetic texts and his evocative, dreamlike and vibrantly colored illustrations, in a very personal and unmistakable style. In this book there is a subtle, constant, at times ringing invitation to hope, not to abandon one’s dreams, not to deny one’s imagination, to understand the inestimable richness of certain fortunes granted by destiny, not to stop looking for light beyond every shadow, to continue to believe that everything can be transformed inside and then outside of us, all the time.

Liao, playing on at times surreal and humorous tones and disclosing continuous openings on the corner of the world in which each of us can find lost traces of ourselves and start again, tells the story of a child, who set off in search of a corner of the world; his narration is addressed to girls and boys and, perhaps, above all adults, while painting with rare lyricism, delicacy and sincerity the variegated universe of needs, dreams, melancholies and hopes of the many varieties of humankind.

Ringraziamenti
Ringrazio Tiziana Marranci, nostra libraia illuminante, per i suoi suggerimenti e Luca Ganzerla per la puntuale presentazione a cui parte della mia recensione si ispira.

Thanks
I thank Tiziana Marranci, our enlightening bookseller, for her suggestions and Luca Ganzerla for the interesting presentation which inspired part of my review.

Credits

Author: Anna Lacci is a scientific popularizer and expert in environmental education and sustainability and in territory teaching. She is the author of documentaries and naturalistic books, notebooks and interdisciplinary teaching aids, and multimedia information materials.

Translation by Maria Antonietta Sessa