"La via del Sole" (The road of the sun) narrates the fictional story of an engineer working to achieve his most important goal in life. Through this story, Mauro Corona wants to express his feelings about modern society in all of Its forms. It ridicules capitalism and politics, with a sense of hopelessness and sadness.

The story follows the work of an engineer of a powerful family whom loves so much the sun that he wants to see It as much as possible. His father is a rich man owning a marble extraction company with sites all over the world, his son, the engineer, has never lacked a thing and surely lived a life of abundance and vanity. The book starts with a change of heart from the engineer who is tired of the falseness of his life and decides to live a peaceful life in a mountain house surrounded by books and his beloved sun. There is a big problem, however, that is blocking the engineer from loving his sun completely: the mountains obstructing the view. Therefore, the engineer embarks in a noble goal to destroy all the mountains he could see in order to clear the road of the sun in the sky for the liking of all humanity.

This goal would consume him until his death. The engineer, out of his own selfishness, will use his money to corrupt politicians and shape the world as he wishes. People tried to reason with him, but he is helping humanity by freeing the sun and he, with his money, is unstoppable.

Mauro Corona is surely one of these people who would try to stop him. He manifests himself through different characters and his narration. But even if the narrator described the engineer as the worst of the worst, I think the engineer would not care at all and he would continue enriching himself, destroying nature and teaching people how the world really works.

There is one moment in particular I want to highlight. While the engineer was still in his early stages of his master plan, he meets a funny man with a binocular. The two start talking about the meaning of everything and politics, but their views were so distant from each other that each one was just asserting their views without any dialogue. The engineer represented modern society, capitalism and selfishness, while the other man represented nature, sharing and wisdom. I think this summarizes the entire book, which continues repeatedly talking about the same destruction over and over again. I guess this is how the author feels every day.

The book started like any other "I will change my life and live in peace in the mountains" but It surely took an unexpected turn. I liked the book and I finished it, however beware that it becomes quite political and It is very repetitive with his themes, which made me loose some interest. Well, the theme is just one: about how much Mauro Corona dislikes modern society and his values, as he often talks about.

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Travel: Mauro Corona, Index