An adventurous journey through space and time: an exploration that starts in 1886, when young Italian Elio Modigliani lands on the remote Nias Island, in Indonesia, where at that time headhunters used to make mincemeat of Dutch colonizers and military expeditions sent there to «teach them a lesson».
Yet, Modigliani explores the island’s wildest regions, making his way through tribal wars, slave merchants and epidemics, developing a deep empathy for other cultures, he learns to know the Nias and comes back to tell the story. His own and theirs.
Why did the headhunters spare his life? More than a century later, Vanni Puccioni, also a Florentine, followed Modigliani’s tracks in those same villages where he had been — and where little has changed — seeking out the descendants of Chiefs and warriors to get their side of the story, hoping to find the key to his survival...
Yet, Modigliani explores the island’s wildest regions, making his way through tribal wars, slave merchants and epidemics, developing a deep empathy for other cultures, he learns to know the Nias and comes back to tell the story. His own and theirs.
Why did the headhunters spare his life? More than a century later, Vanni Puccioni, also a Florentine, followed Modigliani’s tracks in those same villages where he had been — and where little has changed — seeking out the descendants of Chiefs and warriors to get their side of the story, hoping to find the key to his survival...
