Favourite Books 2025

I try to read every day, but I find it increasingly difficult to find books which interest me. Most of the time, I leave them incomplete. In 2025, it was almost the end of January when I finally finished a book.

Now, my criteria of a good book is that I finish reading it. This post is about the 30 books that I finished reading in 2025. I mainly read crime-mysteries and thrillers, and a wide range of non-fiction books.

This post is subdivided into three parts - Non-Fiction books, Thrillers and Mysteries and Other books. Under each sub-group, the books are presented in the order that I read them. Read till the end of this post, if you want to know the 5 books I really liked most among these 30. (Click on the pictures for a bigger view)

Part 1: Non-Fiction Books I liked in 2025 - 8 Books

Notes from an Island by Tove Jonsson and Tuulikki Pietila: It is a diary of 2 women who went to live on a tiny uninhabited skerry (island) off the coast of Finland during 1960s and lived there for some decades till they were too old to do so. It was first published in 1996.

Tove had a beautiful way of writing. Her words are sharp and essential. Tooti (Tuulikki) is the artist, she has contributed to the book with ink-washouts and etchings of the sea.

A large part of the diary is about their daily life but occasionally the prose goes on a deep dive into emotions. For example, here is a tiny sample where Tove writes about the visitors - "Sometimes they bring their friends, sometimes, the loss of friends ..." 

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Chinese-American author Yiyun Li (2025) is about the suicide of her younger son, James.

Composed of a series of essays, it starts with the difficulty of informing a family about the death of a child, especially through suicide. In it, Yiyun looks from outside-inside perspectives at her own family, her own feelings and her memories of her son.

This book made me cry, and also, deeply uncomfortable. I have also written a separate post about it.

Japanese Psychotherapies: Silence and Body-Mind Interconnectedness in Morita, Naikan and Dohsa-hou by Velizara Chervenkova (2017): We are all familiar with psychotherapy, where people talk to mental health professionals. The idea that one can remain silent and use silence as a therapy does not fit in with that logic.

This book explains Japanese psychotherapy approaches  based on Buddhism and Zen, such as silence, mind-body connectedness and mindfulness. They reminded me of Vipassana practices in India.

I especially liked the discussions about 'Do' approaches - from tea making (chado) to flower arrangements (shado) and martial arts (judo, akaido), where focus, inner calm and harmony need to be cultivated.

Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken (2023): Sometimes the so-called "healthy foods" can be very unhealthy, because they contain strange chemicals for making people eat more. These ultra-processed foods can reset our body mechanisms and biospheres, can make us overweight and promote metabolic disorders leading to heart and mental health problems.

This book, written by a doctor, goes in depth of this argument, talking about new understandings from different scientific studies, and not on "research" conducted by big food-companies. It also provides insights about how doctors and nutritionists are taught about food, and how that teaching needs to change to understand the impact of food multi-nationals on our bodies.

If you are interested in nutrition and want to be aware about all the different chemicals that are added to food, which is then advertised as healthy food, read this book. IMO, it is one of the best written books on this theme. It is especially useful for persons with diabetes, obesity and other health conditions.

New Rules of War - Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder (2019) by Sean McFate: If I had read this book when it had come out, I would have stopped reading it after 10-15 pages because it would have sounded unbelievable and more like a deranged conspiracy-theorist. However, it's descriptions of what the crumbling of a rule-based world-order looks like, seem to be terrifying real in 2025 because of what is happening with President Trump.

McFate looks at the way different wars have been fought over the past century to conclude that the rule-based world-order was coming to a close and soon it will affect America. His another conclusion is that excessive reliance on technology to win future wars is a doomed strategy.

McFate's many predictions in this book made me feel a little anxious, so I skipped some parts.

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott (2021): A tiny book (128 pages on my Kobo reader), it has a series of essays in which Lamott explores the different issues around human frailty based on her life-experiences which include struggles with alcoholism and her uncontrolled sexual linkages while being drunk, difficult relationships with parents, her late-in-life discovery of love with a guy called Neal and her discovery of faith. Lamott is a wonderful writer and she concludes the book with a small essay about the time when everyone called her 'a terrible writer' and where she nearly dies while being drunk.

The book is full of stories about touching rock-bottom, facing challenges, surviving them and finding your feet again, all accompanied by a dispassionate dissection of her own failures and mistakes, many of which touched me deeply. For example, in the first chapter of the book where she talks about her experience of talking to children in the Sunday school about the soul, she writes, "Is the soul damaged by acne, political madness, rigid or unloving parents? I think so, damaged but not mortally so. It becomes callused, barricaded, yet it is always there for the asking, always ready for hope. ... Certain qualities are of soul, and not of mind or culture. Curiosity is one way that we know that our souls are functioning. ..." 

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2014): The author is a mental health professional who has worked for many decades with persons who have had terrible experiences of violence, such as war veterans, women and children victims of different kinds of violence.

His experience shows that many persons, who had experienced violence in their childhood, often end up sharing some common symptoms. However, usually these conditions are seen as individual psychiatric illnesses and the global picture is ignored. He explains his ideas in a simple and empathetic language, which is interesting both for professionals and individuals. I found the book very interesting except for the last parts about different therapies.

Breaking Through by Isher Judge Ahluwalia: Isher was a renowned economist in India during 1980s-90s. Breaking Through is her memoir written during the final days of her life in 2019-20, as she was undergoing treatment for a brain tumour. My younger sister had worked with her as a research assistant and in 1986, I had briefly met both Isher and her husband Montek Singh Ahluwalia when they had come to our home for her marriage.

Her memoir is a fascinating and personal look at the days and years that had changed the economic policies in India during early 1990s. I could also relate to her life in Washington DC, as one of my sisters lives there. I found her references to being a devout Sikh and the final parts of the book where she spoke about her cancer, very touching. 

Part 2: Crime, Mysteries & Thrillers - 13 Books

Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer (2021) is a police procedural about a murder in an opal mine located in a desert area in north-eastern Australia. The descriptions about the the desert are very vivid and the personalities of the two detectives, Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are very well chiselled out. 

The book is very slow and nothing seems to happen for a very long time except for the two detectives plodding along, trying this and that. However, the writing is wonderful and the descriptions of the desert-life are riveting.

The final chapter of the book where it explains the what, who, why of everything, was a kind of let down. However, overall it was a good read.

Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell (2021) is another police procedural, this time from the point of view of the chief medical officer (CMO), Kay Scarpetta, responsible for autopsies and forensic aspect of crime investigations.

The book has a slow beginning with the discovery of the body of a murdered woman near a railway track. The interest in the first half of the book is sustained by different stories of the other persons in the "Scarpetta world" - her brother-in-law, her niece with her cat and a missing cat-collar, her secretary, her boss and the mystery of astronauts' death in the space.

The ending of this book felt a bit hurried, when most loose ends were tied, but not very neatly.  

Cold Justice by Ant Middleton (2021): An action thriller, it is about Mallory, a war veteran, feeling guilty about his decision in Afghanistan which had led to the death of some of his men. He decides to help the mother of one of his ex-colleagues to search for her missing second son. It is fast paced, some good action scenes and well-written text with a James Bond kind of hero who knows how to get out of tricky situations.

I am not too fond of complicated climax scenes with continuous twists and new villains to overcome and in that sense, the final bits were a little tedious but the last scene with its unexpected final twist left a good after-taste. I found it to be a quick and interesting read.

I Have Something To Tell You by Susan Lewis (2021): It was a kind of two-in-one kind of books with two parallel stories that come together near the last part. One story is about a lawyer Jay and her client Edward, accused of having murdered his wife. The second thread is about the personal lives of Jay and Edward - Jay has problems with her husband Tom, who has been unfaithful, while Edward's wife had gone into self-destructive behaviour after losing her young son in an accident. The first 60% of the book focuses on the murder investigation while the last 40% mixes the personal issues and makes them as the main focus.

It is a very well written book, especially the psychological build-up of different characters. However, it book drags in some parts, it should have been edited and 50 pages less would have been better (now it is almost 400 pages).

Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey (2021): This police procedural has the overweight detective Peter Diamond playing a duet with the street-smart private eye Johnny Getz while they look for a missing antique dealer. The writer uses a third person narrative for the chapters about the police detective and a first person narrative for the chapters about the private eye.

The murder mystery starts with a dead thief's body hidden inside an Egyptian mummy-coffin in the antique shop. The best part of the book is the humour and one-liners, especially in the parts about Johnny Getz.

The writer of this book, Peter Lovesey died in 2025. 

Indigo Ridge by Devney Perry (2021): The book mixes a murder mystery and a romance story, a genre that normally I don't like. However, being on holidays at the seaside probably helped me to overcome my resistance. The murder mystery is about young girls jumping to their deaths from a rocky cliff, while the romantic story has a Marlboro man kind of rancher and the new young woman-chief of the local police.

The romance part has some explicit scenes of red-hot sex, while the murder mystery has the final twist with the unexpected killer, which was kind of difficult to believe in. I finished this one in less than 24 hours (being on a holiday helped in that).

One on One by Michael Brandman (2018): is a police procedural located in a fictional town called Freedom in south California. Buddy Steel, the deputy sheriff is single, emotionally fragile and conflicted about his father Sheriff Burton Steel, who is battling a deadly neurological condition.

The whole premise of the book, about a charming psychopath working in a school, who can convince anyone to have sex with him, including minor school girls, is a kind of unbelievable, because none of the parents suspect that it is a problem or the kind of guy he is.

It has a sub-plot about a street-artist, with a convenient resolution. The book has no great characterisations, but some good one-liners. Still it is readable because it is written well.

Silverview by John Le Carré (2021): I have been a long-time admirer of the spy books of John Le Carré. it is the story of an old Polish-British ex-spy who has decided to pass over to the other side, and the people trying to catch him.

Silverview, his last book, has only around 150 pages that he was unable to complete and was completed after his death by his son Nick Cornwell. In the 'afterword' written by Nick, he explains that the book was almost done and needed only some minor corrections, in fact he was surprised why his father had not completed it.

The book is about British spies, but is not much of a mystery. Rather, it reflects the present times, when even spy services must interrogate themselves and no one is sure of being on and fighting for the right side, because all sides are guilty of playing with blood of innocents. It is written beautifully with wonderful characterisations.

Desert Star by Michael Connelly (2022): The murder mystery and a police procedural has two of the iconic and most loved characters of the Connelly fiction universe, Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard. The book has two serial killers under the cold case unit. I don't know if this is the curtain call for Harry Bosch or if he going to have more books. His part in the book ends with an almost final withdrawal from the police work, though he has already retired a few times and made come-backs.

The book has a strong emotional core and a bit of vigilante justice. I found the final part of the book to be an absolute cracker. Don't miss this one if you like crime-fiction.

If only she knew by Alexandria Clarke (2021): This murder mystery, set in a small mid-west town setting has a sheriff helped by a woman with paranormal skills. She is called Calamity (Cal) James, who can talk to the dead people. I am not very fond of fiction about paranormal

While almost everyone thinks that she is weird and suspect her of being a a murderer, the sheriff believes in her and asks for her to find a missing woman. It is an easy read.

Murder at St Anne's by J. R. Ellis (2021): In a snow-covered winter, a female pastor in a Yorkshire Anglican church is found dead, killed by a heavy blow to her head. Detective Oldroyd is asked to investigate. Oldroyd's sister is also a pastor and was a friend of the dead woman, so the detective has an indirect personal connection to the victim. People say that she was killed by the ghost of a medieval monk but of course, the detective does not believe in it. It is an enjoyable police procedural book, with some interesting discussions about conservatives and liberals in the Anglican church.

Another aspect of the book I found interesting and yet a little jarring is the use of the pronoun 'they' for the assassin, to indicate that it could be a man or a woman - I thought it was too deliberate, it distracted the flow of the book because we don't think in a politically correct way. Instead, using 'he' would have been better. Otherwise, it is very well written.

The Night Shift by Robert Enright (2016): The action thriller with its hero Sam Pope, is in the tradition of action-heroes like Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher. It is full of non-stop action. Pope is much more violent compared to other action heroes and the book has some scenes of gory violence depicted in excruciating detail.

It makes for quick reading like a pack of chips, but it is marred by poor editing with many grammar mistakes and some poorly plotted scenes - probably being the first book, the author himself did the editing. Hopefully, his more recent books are better edited.

Dark Heart by Joan Fallon (2022):  The book is based in Malaga in Spain and has a very Spanish vibe. When I read it, I had thought that it was an English translation of a Spanish book. The book has the detective Jacaranda Dunn (JD) accompanied by her helpers Linda and Nacho, working in collaboration with the Spanish Guardia Civil, to solve the murder mystery of a famous actor during a film festival.

JD has a kind of situation-affair with the chief of the police. Her assistant Linda has to deal with a family emergency. And the murder mystery has the background of the Basque fight for independence. All these elements create the parallel background stories, which are told in an interesting way. I enjoyed it. 

Part 3: Other Genres of Books - 9 Books

The majority of these books were in the category of human relationships, with bits of romance in some in them.

On Fire Island by Jane L. Rosen: This book from 2023 was surprising, because at the end of the first chapter, Julie Morse, the book-editor by profession and the heroine of the story, dies from cancer. The second chapter is about her funeral. So the book written in first person, is a story told by a ghost, telling her experiences of following her grieving recently-widowed husband who comes to spend a few months at their seaside summer home.

The book has some tear-jerker parts but mostly the narrator's voice is playful, occasionally ironic and humorous. There are plenty of stories of other local characters, each of which often goes in some unexpected directions. An easy and interesting read - I read the 300+ pages' book in just over 3 evenings.

Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: The book is about 2 sisters living in a small village in France during the second world war and how their lives change because of the war. Vianne's husband leaves for the war, her close friend is Jewish, and through her, she will help save Jew children, even while she is forced to share her house and bed with a German.

The younger sister, Isabel, fights with the Nazi regime and helps allied pilots, only to end in a concentration camp. 

Based partly on a real-life story, I found parts of the book too intense and melodramatic for my taste, however I did finish it. It was recommended to me by some friends from our Reading Group, who had really loved it. 

Translation State by Ann Leckie (2023): This science-fiction book is part of the Radch empire series, but it is a stand-alone book. It has three main characters - Enae, a noble family woman who has passed her life in looking after her grandmother; Reet, an abandoned child with strange DNA who has been raised by foster parents; and Qven, a hybrid human-bio machine, who is being trained to be a Presger translator. Enae is asked to look for a fugitive who had come from another space-station some two hundred years ago, and her search brings her in contact with Reet and Qven.

The rules for different kinds of beings populating the Radch world are not explained in the book. Therefore, the terms for different humans, aliens, AI beings and hybrids, were not very clear to me. Yet I found the book interesting and mind-expanding. The clever use of language and genders, was both a bit disorienting and intuitively understandable. It has two understated love-stories that can be loosely understood as queer, but since the genders of the different characters are not very clear, the queerness is also not so clear.

After a very long, finally I had found a science fiction book that I liked, so I am very pleased about it. I had even started feeling that something has changed in me and that I won't like SF books ever again.

Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi (2021): This is a tiny book, a novella about Christmas time and the heartbreaking difference between dreams and reality for a little girl called Ronja.

I read the Italian translation (Porta delle Stelle) of this book written originally in Norwegian for my book-reading club. On my own, I don't think that I would have completed reading it, because it is about a family dealing with an alcohol addiction, a theme that I hate since it brings back unpleasant memories of when I was working as a community doctor. In fact, even if it is a tiny book, I read it in small pieces over a week.

Apart from the theme, it is very well-written and it seems that it has been a bestseller in many languages.

Larch Tree Lane by Anna Jacobs (2022): is a pleasant read, partly a cosy mystery, partly a love story about Lucia and Corin. She is running from her stalker-violent ex-husband and he is an architect who has returned to England after a decade of working for non-profits in different developing countries.

Lucia finds refuge in the house of a lonely old woman and Corin buys a group of old cottages nearby. The mystery is about a second world war building and some guys who do not wish him to buy those old houses. The book is first of a series based in a Wiltshire village.

It seems that the ninety years old author Anna Jacobs has written more than a hundred books and probably all that practice contributes towards making this book an easy, though an underwhelming read, I liked her second book (below) much more.

Magnolia Gardens by Anna Jacobs (2024): is also based in the same Wiltshire village. This time, the story has a set of small houses made for hosting people facing difficult situations.

The book is about the lives and challenges of 3 persons who need safe-places to live while they get over a difficult phase of their lives - one is a woman is running from a stalker ex-boyfriend, another is a dyslexic young man coming from a difficult life in foster-care homes and the third is an old widower who has lost his house in a fire.

The stories are connected by a retired woman who works as the warden. Corin from the first book makes a small appearance in this book. It is better plotted and written compared to the first book and makes for a pleasant read - read it if you like books about relationships.

The House Beneath the Cliff by Sharon Gosling (2021): is the story of Anna, searching for her own self-identity, who comes to live in a remote fishing village and about her relationship with villagers.

Anna had been working as a sub-chef while being in a live-in relationship with the head chef, who is an abusive and manipulative ex-boyfriend and a TV personality.

She comes to live in a little house in a tiny fishing village called Crovie hugging a cliff facing the north sea in Scotland. It is a good book if you like reading about human relationships. I was struck by its descriptions of the life in a tiny fishing village, and how it looks picturesque to the tourists but has many challenges for daily living. 

Seven Perfect Things by Catherine Ryan Hyde (2021): The book is about a young teenager who saves seven puppies from drowning and decides to look after them. Through the puppies she meets a man grieving for his wife who has recently died. The two of them find support in each other, and as the man starts helping the teenager to take care of the puppies, he is drawn in her family problems which include a mother who is hoping to run away from home and an alcoholic and controlling companion-father.

It is a pleasant read, though I did skipped some pages in a few parts of this book.

The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges (1945): This book of short stories by the famous Argentinian writer was part of my book-reading group books. I read it in Italian and thus could imagine and appreciate the lyrical beauty of original writing in Spanish. 

I read large parts of this book aloud and felt hypnotized by the words. Even while appreciating the poetry of his language, it is not an easy book because it is written in a way where it is difficult to remember the storylines about philosophy and fantasy touching on themes such as mythologies, dreams and labyrinths. So though I loved it while reading it, I can't tell you the storyline of any of its stories.

Conclusions

This year I must have opened hundreds of books but finished reading only 30 of them - 8 non-fiction books, 13 books about crime, mysteries and thrillers, and 9 books in other genres including a SF book. 

Since I have thousands of books on my ebook reader and I know that in my remaining lifetime, I am going to read only a tiny proportion of them, so if a book bores me, I simply close it and try a new one. It is very different from my childhood, when I used to find interesting all the books I bought or took on loan from libraries.

My top 5 books from the above 30 books are: 

(1) Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken - I liked it so much that I bought and gifted copies of it to my son and a friend.

(2) Silverview by John Le Carré - for its gentle story-telling of a spy story.

(3) Desert Star by Michael Connelly - for a great crime-thriller.

(4) Translation State by Ann Leckie - for the great science-fiction story set in a new hybrid world. 

(5) Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott - for the honesty with which shares the highs and lows of her life as a human being and as an author.

*** 

Favourite Works From Mutations 2025 Art Exhibition

This year, the theme of the contemporary art exhibition Mutazioni (Mutations) was "The Signs".

Mutazioni is an annual art event in our town, Schio (VI) in the north-east of Italy. It is usually organised around the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. 

Since this year's theme was a bit abstract, the exhibits were very different. A distinguishing feature of this years' exhibition was a series of exhibits from different countries of Africa from the personal collection of artist and art-collector Bruno Sandonà.

As always, there was a lot to see and admire in the exhibition. In this post, I want to present some of my favourite art-works from the Mutazioni 2025.

The picture on the left is from an installation created by a group of artists from a cooperative working with marginalised persons and disabled persons called Coop Libra that I had liked very much.

A few exhibits seemed familiar to me, they were similar to those presented in earlier editions of Mutazioni exhibitions. So I have excluded them from this list.

Let me start with a hand-painted dress. You can click on the images for a bigger view. 

Hand-Painted Silk by Daria Tasca and Annamaria Iodice

Daria Tasca from Treviso is known for her art combined with woven materials. This time, she was joined by Annamaria Iodice, a sculptor, painter, designer and performer from Naples.

The two artists took a piece of silk woven in early 1950s, hand-painted it and created a two-piece dress out of it, wrapped around a framework of iron, copper and aluminium. It was inspired by the digital prints of an art-work called "The Earthquake" by Slavia Janeslieva and Teona Milieva.

Last year, in the Mutazioni 2024 exhibition, Daria had joined with a ceramic artist Vania Sartori to create a somewhat similar artwork focusing on ceramics, while this year the focus was on painting. I think that works like this are important to remind ourselves that art may not only be in the exhibits but even be worn by persons.

Ceramic Dresses of Lorenzo Gnesotto

There was another artist in the exhibition focusing on wearables. He had used ceramics for creating "dresses", though his interpretation of this idea was completely different. 

Lorenzo is from Bassano del Grappa. His artworks included 3 quirky ceramic "dresses" made from Terracotta bound by elastic fibres. Through the use of different kinds of clays for making the terracotta pieces, it gave them different colours and designs.

More than dresses, they seemed like body-decorations. They also remind me of the metal nets and armours used by medieval soldiers to protect their bodies.

Origami Sculptures and Sound-Installations by Silvia Tedesco

This artwork was by Silvia from Vicenza and it included three round bases on which origami sculptures covered with resins were placed. At the same time, each sculpture was associated with a specific soundscape. In fact, she describes her art as "Talking Artwork".

One of the sculptures, called "the Soul Dance" had dragonfly-shaped origami, another called "Dream and Bubble Soap" had soap bubbles and the third one called "Carpe-Diem" had the Japanese Kohako-Koi fishes. Click on the image for a bigger view.

Monotype Incision Prints by Manuela Simoncelli

Manuela was born in Australia and has her workshop in Mussolente (VI). For the past few years, she has been experimenting with incisions. Apart from her work as an artist, she is also a Jazz singer.

 She had three monotype prints in the exhibition, they were titled Rhythm 1-2-3. One had the silhouette of a woman reading a book, second with a girl and third, a woman with a mobile phone. She first makes the incisions using soft-wax and dry-point and then uses toner transfer for creating unique monotypes.

Abstract Art by Stefania Righi

Stefania is from Vicenza and she had three paintings in the exhibition. Her art tends towards abstract, using mixed material techniques by using materials like stucco and cementite along the oil and acrylic colours to create textured art-works.

I loved her art. For example, the painted shown above, felt like looking at a Zen garden with its soft colours, and hidden forms and shapes that seemed to come out of and disappear in the fog.

Art Works by Bruno Sandonà

Bruno Sandonà from Pastina is both an artist as well as, an art-collector. In the Mutations 2025 exhibition, there were 3 of his artworks. It also had a whole section dedicated to his collection of the art-objects from Africa.

From his art works, I have chosen one of his paintings for this post (left). It had a raw energy and seemed to be inspired by his collection of African art.

I also liked his ceramic-leg sculpture in the exhibition.  

There was a big collection of art objects from different parts of Africa, especially from the countries of West Africa.

About his art-works collection from Africa, in the images below you can see a sculpture that has a kind of ritual container placed on the legs of the two persons. It is from the Dogon people in Mali.

Abstract Paintings by Davide Piazza

Davide Piazza is the president since 2003 of the well-known art-circle La Soffitta located in Vicenza. Apart from being a well-known artist, he is known as a teacher, as he conducts courses of oil painting.

In the exhibition, there were three of his artworks, all three were in shades of blue and yellow. They reminded me of lakes and sand-dunes, with undefined borders, and seemed to transmit serenity and joy.

Hyper-Realism of Giovanni Meneguzzo

Giovanni Meneguzzo, who presented 3 paintings in this exhibition is originally from Malo and now lives in Olmi di Treviso. Malo had 2 other artists from the Meneguzzo family (Giobatta and Corrado) but I am not sure if Giovanni is related to them.

His three paintings in the exhibition, were in hyper-realism style. One had the autumn leaves, another had a discarded cardboard box  used for a gift and the third had left over stuff along with with an old demijohn wine-bottle. I liked all three of them.

Giovanni started as a teacher in an art school. His passion has been to collect left-over stuff such as old leaves, clay, bottles, etc. and create his artworks based on them or by using them in his art.

Absence-Essence Installation by Francesco Risola

The installation had a tree-stump surrounded by dry and cracked earth, on which shadows of a moving tree-leaves were being projected. Thus, the essence or the echo of the tree that had been there in the past was being evoked in the installation by the projection of the shadows of the tree.

The artist seemed to focus his art to share his emotions about thoughtless and meaningless destruction of the nature.

I liked this installation and its idea of projecting the moving shadows of a tree on the tree-stump & cracked dry earth. I felt that it expressed very well the impermanence of life.

Sara Zilio's Flowing Matter

Sara Zilio is an artist from Schio. She had only one artwork in the exhibition, an acrylic painting that seemed like different colours flowing on a liquid surface, sometimes blurring and sometimes separate, tending towards each other like the extended fingers of man touching the divine in Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine chapel.

A friend who was visiting the exhibition with me, didn't like it, he said that it reminded him of snakes. So as you can see, choosing favourite artworks is very subjective and his choice of favourites would have been very different from mine. 

Flavio Pelligrini's Abstract Art

Pellegrini's work in the exhibition was one of the most unusual one for me in this exhibition. Pelligrini likes to work with wood, but not by creating usual wood sculptures. Instead, he uses his passion for information technology (IT) to create very unusual abstract art with the wood.

For example, you can click on it and enlarge the above image of Pellegrini's work to look at how he has created it by mixing together wood and IT. I felt that looking at it can be a transcendental experience, guiding our minds towards a meditation on infinity. 

To Conclude: Metamorphosis by Coop Libra

Let me conclude this post with another installation, which I liked very much.

It was a group work made by different persons from a cooperative based in Romano d'Ezzelino that works with marginalised and disabled persons. They had created it under the guidance of art-therapist Valentina Grotto.  

The installation had a mannequin in the centre, who represented the Butterfly-Goddess that is transforming from the Pupa to the Butterfly, and was covered by plastic bags. The central figure was surrounded by a spiral made from individual art-works on paper and clothes. 

Apart from the idea underlying this installation, I felt that visually it created a stunning impact.

If you liked looking at my favourite works from this years Mutazioni exhibition, perhaps you would like to check similar posts about previous editions of Mutazioni - 2021-22 edition and the 2024 edition 

*** 

Art and Dance: Two Passions of Lucio Mantese

As a child, Lucio Mantese had 2 passions - art and dance. Born in a humble family, where his father ran a Meat-shop in Schio, he went started working when he was fifteen. Yet, with his grit and determination, he has been able to create a life for himself, both as a successful artist and a dancer.

I am always trying to write about the creative persons, especially artists living in Schio and Alto-Vicentino, and it was a long time that I wanted to write about Lucio. He has an art gallery in the city and 2-3 years ago, I had told him that I wanted to interview him.

Recently (October 2025), there was an exhibition of five artists in the historical Toaldi Capra palazzo in Schio's city centre. Lucio was one of them. This gave me finally an opportunity to talk to him. This post tells his story in his own words. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

Sunil: Lucio, you don't live in Schio any more, instead you live in Cogollo del Cengio. What happened, how did this decision of moving out came about?

Lucio: As a boy, I always wanted a home surrounded by greenery. I heard about this land in mountain in Cogollo del Cengio, which was surrounded by the forest and there I found the terrain to realise my dream. At that time, I didn't have enough money to buy it, so I had to take a bank loan, which I paid slowly. It is my dream home.

Sunil: Tell me about your interest for art.

Lucio: Already in the primary school, my teachers used to bring me the pictures of their children, asking me to make their portraits. This helped me to avoid mathematics, which I used to find very difficult. It was a God-given gift. When people ask me where did I learn painting, I tell them ask Pavarotti where did he learn to sing like that. It is a talent, a gift which I had.

Sunil: You didn't study art?

Lucio: I followed the great artists. For example, I learned from important painters who would make still life or landscapes. I could visit their art-studios, see them at work and learn from them. The person who first taught me art was Cesare Valle, though I am mostly self-taught. I did study for a couple of years at the Academia in Venice.

Another thing which helped me to learn art was an art-gallery owner who used to bring me renaissance period art for making their copies. I did this work for about 15 years and that was a big learning period for me, because to have the art-works of renaissance artists, to study them, to see how they had created and to recreate that. I was about 30 years old at that time when I started doing these copies of the famous art works.

Sunil: But the famous artists are so diverse, each with his own way of designing and using colours, how did you learn how to copy such different styles?

Lucio: I can copy only renaissance period art. This style requires that I first make a background like with water-colours, so that the art work does not start on a white canvas, but on another background such as grey. Then I let it dry. I work in layers and after each layer, I have to let it dry. This way of covering with layers of veils is important for renaissance period art.

For example, the blue cloaks that are part of the renaissance paintings by famous artists - I first paint it in black and white, and then with transparent veils of ultramarine or another shade of blue, I would cover it. The parts underneath which are dark remain dark and the parts which were white, they show the colours, but this gives a light to the colours.

Sunil: These specific techniques, how did you learn them?

Lucio: Now there are YouTube channels where you can learn everything, but I had the books of the famous artists in which they explained their way of working.

Sunil: Do you try to recreate such works with old pigments which were used in that period?

Lucio: No, I use the normal colours available in the market. Raffaello used beautiful pigments which continue to be beautiful even 500 years later. The modern colours, they started to be used by artists like Van Gogh, but his famous blues are becoming black. So we don't know what will happen to them.

Sunil: Among the renaissance period artists that you have duplicated, who do you like most?

Lucio: I love the works of Caravaggio. At the time he was painting, he was criticised because his figures looked real, they did not respect the artistic canons of that period. For example, look at the Madonna in this work, she looks like a poor pilgrim woman (points to a copy of a Caravaggio painting he has made). This is similar to our modern sensibility while many other renaissance figures in the paintings they are idealised, they look like the pictures of the saints.

Sunil: Tell me about this self-portrait, with the mountains and the river behind you.

Lucio: This is a recent work, I have painted myself sitting in my garden. It shows our mountains - Colletto di Velo, Summano and Pasubio. The one you call 'river', in reality there is a road passing there, I replaced it with a mountain path. I keep on making self-portraits and when I don't like it any more, I make a new one. I like this one because I think that it shows intensity.

Sunil: Apart from making copies, what other kind of paintings you like to make?

Lucio: I like the local landscapes of Veneto, I like to show them as dream-like landscapes. However, 90% of my work is making portraits commissioned by the people. They bring me the photographs. For example, a man brought me the picture of his wife when she was young and they had gone to some tropical country for their honeymoon. So when I made her portrait, I added more beauty to her and added a tropical background to it. He cried when he saw it, said that I had given him a wonderful memory of his wife.

Sunil: It is beautiful. How much time you need to make something like this?

Lucio: I am quick. Drying needs time, if it is a sunny day or I use a heater, it reduces that time. If we don't count that I can do it in a week.

Sunil: Do you paint everyday?

Lucio: From 9 in the morning, as long as there is sunlight, I am very disciplined. When I am working for too long, then I take a break by going to work in my garden. I look after the garden of our home.

Sunil: Apart from art, you are also passionate about dance, tell me about it.

Lucio: When I was twenty, there was a couple with whom I was very friendly, they loved dancing. Going out with them, I also started dancing, and I joined a dancing school. After the first lesson, I decided that I loved it and I wanted to do it for living. I saw the light, I said that I want to teach dancing. I studied dance in Padua, from one of the greats of dancing, a world champion and to learn from him I used to go to him from midnight till one in the night. Then became a professional and later opened my own dancing school.

I stopped the meat shop of my family that we had, even if my father was very upset about it, because that was the family activity - my father, brothers, grandfather had all worked there. Ten years later, he told me that he was wrong and that I had taken the right decision.

Sunil: Do you still have that dance school?

Lucio: Even though now I am old, but my dance school continues to work that to my son Daniele, who is twenty-six years old. He is national level dancer in Italy for standard dance and Latin dances. I took him to learn dance when he was six. Initially he was not very keen but I told him, when you grow up then you can decide if you want to continue it or not. When he became 18, he said that he wanted to continue it, he was already considered an A-level dancer. Eighteen is too late to start learning dancing, you need to start earlier. Thanks to him and his partner, our dancing school has found a new vitality.

Sunil: Thanks Lucio for giving me your time.  

You can check and contact him through Lucio's Facebook and Instagram pages, there you can also see pictures of his dance school and his son Daniele.

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Minotaur Myth To Talk About Diversity

The Greek myth of Minotaur was about the Minoan civilisation in the Crete island, around 3000 BCE.

In May this year, a theatre group (Campus Company) of Schio's Civic Theatre brought together the students from the different local schools to create a theatre performance on the myth of Minotaur, to talk about the themes of diversity and inclusion. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

This post is about that theatre performance called "Minotauro della Diversità" (Minotaur of Diversity).

Minoans and the Minotaur Myth 

Minoan was a Bronze age civilisation on the Crete island in the Aegean sea.

The myth says that king Mino didn't worship properly to the God Poseidon and the angered God made his queen fall in love with a bull (Taurus). Thus the queen gave birth to a ferocious half-man, half-bull creature called Minotaur, who was closed inside a labyrinth. King Mino asked Athenians to send human sacrifice for Minotaur. An Athenian young man called Theseus offered to be the sacrifice for Minotaur. He killed Minotaur and was able to escape the labyrinth with the help of a string given to him by the king's daughter who loved him.

Minotaur As a Symbol of Diversity

The symbolism of Minotaur for a child with disability seems very obvious. Manny civilisations had superstitions which saw disabled or diverse children as inauspicious and harbingers of bad luck.

In Italy, over the past couple of decades, there has been large scale migration and today the children of the migrants form a significant part of the students in Schio's schools. Thus, using the Minotaur's myth as the theme of a theatre performance was important to raise questions about and to discuss the issues of diversity and inclusion.

Civic Theatre of Schio

 The Civic Theatre of Schio is managed by a Foundation and it has different projects to promote community engagement and participation in its activities. The theatre was built in early 20th century through an initiative of industrialist Alessandro Rossi with active contribution of the citizens. Over the last few years, it has been repaired and restored to its old glory.

Apart from theatre performance, its activities include Campus Lab (to promote theatre among children and young adults) and Dance Well (dance therapy for persons with Parkinson and elderly persons).

Performance of Minotauro Della Diversità

The performance was the result of a workshop for the students and was directed by Ketti Grunchi (Piccionaia company) and Delfina Pevere. Around 30 students from different schools of Schio took part in it.

The stage set-up was simple and minimalist. A square wooden frame with curtains represented the palace or queen's room. Stones placed on the floor represented the labyrinth. All the actors had plain dark-grey pants and T-shirts, and the addition of a crown or a white mask denoted the king and Minotaur. Long pieces of curtain like materials held on the two sides, made the sea-waves. Persons on the stage were accompanied by readers, who sat on the stairs and provided commentary.

The images used with this post will give you some idea about the performance.

Conclusions

While watching the performance, I was thinking that I would have loved to take part in something like this when I was in school. We did do some plays in School, but they were really basic. While this performance with experienced play-writes and director, technical support though lights and sound, and the kind of preparation that must have gone into making it, would have been at a completely different level.

I think that it is wonderful and we are incredibly lucky that even in our tiny town of Schio, we have such a theatre and similar initiatives which contribute in stimulating creation for the students and a better quality of life for all of us residents.

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Looking for Aditya Bhattacharya

Aditya Bhattacharya, son of the film-director Basu Bhattacharya (1934-97) and grandson of film-director Bimal Roy (1909-66) is known in India mainly for his first film as a director, Raakh (1989), which had Pankaj Kapoor, Aamir Khan and Supriya Pathak (image below).

Recently, I was searching for him for my book on Sonali Senroy Dasgupta (1928-2014), known for her love-story with the Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini in the 1950s.

This post presents an overview about Aditya's life and works. Let me start by explaining why I started searching for him. (All the images are from internet)

Aditya's Sonali Connection

There was a big scandal in the 1950s when Sonali, wife of film-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, had left her husband and gone to live in Europe with Rossellini. Many books have been written about Rossellini.

However, Sonali was a very private person and conceded only few interviews during her life in the 1960s and 70s. Harisadhan lived in India and was not interviewed for the European books. Thus, both Sonali and Harisadhan are almost missing from those books.

Last year, I started to put together a book which could look at this story from the point of view of Sonali and Harisadhan, and their families. For this, I am looking for information about the texture of her days during 1980s-2000s, when the spotlights had moved away from her, leaving her to live in relative anonymity in Rome.

Thus, I thought that Aditya could have provided some information about this period since he had lived in Italy in the early 1990s. Sonali was his mother's cousin and I thought that while in Rome, he must have spent some time with his aunt and her family.

Through my search, I found Aditya and did write to him about Sonali but he did not reply to my message. However, since I had collected information about him, I felt that this would make for an interesting blogpost.

Aditya and His Family

He was born in Bombay in 1965. In a Times of India interview in 2001, he said that "an unstable home environment made him independent early in his life." He was referring to the troubled marriage between his parents, Basu Bhattacharya and Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, which had ended in a divorce. Aditya has two sisters, Chimmu and Anvesha. 

About the film-makers in his family, in an interview in 2007 he said: "I never got a chance to spend time with my grandfather. In fact, my first childhood memory is my grandfather’s death. I was three years old. I have few memories with my father too, as I’ve travelled a lot. I did not expect him to die in 1997. That’s the only regret I have, that I wasn’t there when he needed me and didn’t spend enough time with him. ... My father never shot his films on sets. He would shoot on real locations. Which means, he shot at home. So I would be in the middle of the shoot all the time. Anubhav, Avishkaar, Griha Pravesh and Aastha were shot inside our homes. I have worked with him in only on one film called Panchvati. It was shot in Nepal." (Something does not match here. If he was born in 1965, he would have been one year old in 1966 when Bimal Roy had died; perhaps, he was born earlier, may be in 1963)

In 1997, when his father had died, Aditya was busy with his first Italian film 'Senso Unico'. The film's editing and music were completed in India. He told in the 2021 interview: "Just 2 days earlier I had spoken to him on telephone while he was in the hospital. Finish your work before coming back to see me, he had told me categorically. After his death when I returned, I was unable to think of anything else."

Aditya's Early Works in Bombay

After finishing high school, Aditya decided that he did not wish university education and decided to become a photo-journalist.

In that period, Shyam Benegal asked him to play a role in his film 'Mandi' (1983), and film-magazines hailed him as "the most handsome actor". In the image below, he is on the left in the film's poster, behind Shabana Azmi.

Apart from a few small roles as an actor, he came out with his first film as a director (Raakh) in 1989, when he was only 25. About Aamir Khan, the hero of Raakh, he said: "Aamir and me were classmates in school. In 1983, we had done a short film called Paranoia. We, along with Mansoor Khan, also had a band together. So we were good friends. He did not want to be an actor, he was quite confused about what he wanted to do in life." In the image at the top, he is with Pankaj Kapoor on the sets of this film - Pankaj received a national award for it (the film had received 3 national awards).

During those early years, he was also visiting Prithvi Theatre, where he met Sanjana Kapoor, daughter of well-known Hindi film actor and producer, Shashi Kapoor. Aditya and Sanjana lived together for a few years, before getting married. The marriage lasted a few months and the couple divorced.

About this marriage, in his 2001 interview to ToI, he said: "I was around 18 or 19 when I started hanging around Prithvi (Theatre). Once Sanjana was asked to help with something, we hit it off, and that was the start, he reminisces. The initial spark led to a long term live-in relationship (six years) and later a relatively short-lived marriage. We were very young. We realised we were better a friends and decided to go our separate ways. But we never lost the respect, that caring for each other, at any time."

Aditya's family has many links to other well-known Bollywood film-families. For example, in 2023, his sister Chimmu Acharya's daughter Drisha married well-known actor Dharmendra's grandson and Sunny Deol's son Karan. (Dharmendra has always been close to the Bimal Roy family - his first film Bandini was with Roy and after Roy's death in 1966, he had helped the family by working free in a film called Chaitali). 

Aditya Leaves India and Arrives in Italy

Aditya came to Rome (Italy) in 1990. About his shift to Europe, he said in an interview: "Different people want different things in life. I never dreamt of being famous in Bollywood. I wanted to make films that would make my father and grandfather proud. ... It may sound strange but I wanted to make life difficult for myself ... So I went to Italy the next year and did odd jobs like being a waiter and later, a chef. I also did live editing of television shows in Sicily, a music video for an Italian band, ramp photography… I never called home for help. ... I always feared that I would become a useless guy if I did not struggle and earned things myself. It took me seven years to raise money to make a film. Going through everything there was important for me to become a fuller human being and a better film-maker."

In that same interview, he gave another possible reason for leaving India: "After Raakh, I did a film called Tapori with Mahendra Joshi (a person from Gujarati theatre background who was married to Aamir’s sister Nikhat). He died of a heart attack midway. He was a brilliant theatre person. I didn’t want to do anything for a while, and maybe that’s why I left India." 

About why did he settle in Italy, he said: "I was on my way to London, when I had a stopover in Italy for a week. I really liked the place and the people. So I thought it would be nice to write a story there. After making some money, I made a Italian film called Senso Unico in a place called Messina in Italy. No one had ever shot a film there. I fell in love with that place. To make a film in Italian language, in a place I didn’t know, to raise a lot of money and get a producer from London was a big thing for me. I was 31 years old then."

In another interview for an Italian newspaper in 2021, he had talked about watching Fellini's film '8 1/2' at the Film Institute in India and the huge impact that film had had on him and how he had managed to have a coffee with Fellini many years later while he was shooting his own film, 'Senso Unico'. In this interview he also spoke of leaving India: "In spite of the success of my first film, I was unhappy. I didn't want to follow the dictates of Bollywood and I didn't like the attention of some magazines ..."

Aditya in Messina, Sicily (Italy)

Soon after his Rome experience, in 1991 he shifted to the city of Messina in Sicily. Here, he married Maria Giovanna, a Sicilian, and they have two children. 

In 1995, after shifting to Messina, his name appeared in the programme of the Messina Film Festival as the director of a 1994 short-film "Fannan", about a local music band called Kunsertu. The festival booklet cites the following other works by him -  Indio (1991), Chootey Noì (1992), Contro (1993), Kunsertu Live Acireale (1994) and Mokorto (1994). Probably, these were all short films.

His Italian interview in 2021, also mentions a story about his connection to Messina: "Raakh was shown in a film-festival in Russia. In the festival he met a girl from Messina. Some months later, while in London for discussing some project, he had a stop-over in Rome, and he decided to visit Messina to meet her and some other local persons he had known. He was there for only one week but he knew that he was going to come back to that city. ... He lived there for seven years, working as a video-editor for a local TV station. Since then he goes back to Messina regularly." 

Aditya's Films & Work in Europe 

In 1995, he started working on the screen-play of an Indo-Italian film called Senso Unico (One Way), which was shot and released in 1997. Though this film was presented in some film festivals in 1999 and later became available on Amazon Prime in UK, it was never released in Italy due to some problems among its producers. This film was about Francesco (Lothaire Bluteau), the illustrator of comic books, who also repairs stolen bicycles, and who falls in love with Yasmin (Laila Rouass), an actress shooting a film in the city. The still from a meeting about the film shows Aditya in the left.

In 2005, he directed a Hindi film, Dubai Returned with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta.

In 2007, he was involved as a producer in an Indo-Italian film, The Chase, with Vidyut Jammwal and Sidharth Malhotra. Some shooting for this film was done in Italy and it was being directed by Anubhav Sinha, but this film was stalled.

In 2009, he was planning to direct a film called Sandokan in Sicily but probably it was also stalled or the project did not take off.  

In 2012, he directed Bombay's Most Wanted (BMW) with Sarita Chaudhury, Jaaved Jafri, Samrat Chakrabarty, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The film was about a New York journalist, making a film in Mumbai about 3 characters - an encounter specialist policeman, an informer and a bar dancer.

In 2012, he was also planning to make an English film with the actor Rana Daggubati, based in Los Angles titled A Momentary Lapse of Reason but this film did not work out.

It seems that BMW was his last film though recently (2025) he has been seen in UP in India, acting in a serial for his friend Sudhir Mishra, with whom he has already worked a few times. 

Conclusions

In 2025 Aditya is is 60-62 years old, his children are grown up. He continues to be active. For example, this year he is supposed to run a film-making course between October to December 2025 at the Catalunya School of Film-making in Spain, focusing on the South Asian diaspora.

Every time, persons make a decision which completely changes the direction of their lives, such as Aditya's decision to leave India and to start afresh in Italy and Spain, it is natural to wonder if they occasionally look back and ask themselves if they had taken another path in that moment, then how would be their life today.

Perhaps, Aditya also has such moments of "what if". However, in the 2007 interview, he had said, "I have no regrets. I have made films which have been appreciated. I have two beautiful kids. I have two homes in two parts of the world. And I have respect from my contemporaries."  

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An Artist and His Grand-Daughter

Recently, we had an unusual art exhibition in Schio (click on the pictures for a bigger view).

It presented the works of a hidden artist, someone who had a passion for art, even while he worked in a wool factory and as a house-painter, white-washing the homes. And it was organised by his grand-daughter Alice who had promised her grandfather Romano Benazzi that one day she will organise an art exhibition for him.

The exhibition was called, Nonno Raccontami Un Quadro (Grandpa, tell me a picture).

Romano Benazzi's Life-Story

Romano was born in a village near Ferrara (Italy) in 1941. During the second World War, his father died while fighting in Ukraine. Raised by a single mother, he started working in the fields at a young age. When he was sixteeen, under a Government programme, he came to spend some days with a family in Pieve Belvicino, a few kilometres north of Schio in north-east part of Italy.

A couple of years later, he came back to Pieve in the same programme, but this time a guest of another set of families. Both these experiences created in him strong links of family and friendship, and he fell in love with the beauty of this mountainous area.

He found work with a local firm engaged in painting houses. It was also the period when he started sketching with pencil and charcoal. He fell in love with a local girl, and thus found his wife Gina, who worked in a bar in Pieve. He also took on a second work, at the Lanerossi wool mills of Pieve, while they came to live in Magre area of Schio. They had two children, Guido and Daniela.

Over the years he continued with his passion for art, experimenting with different art mediums including oil paints. After his retirement, he devoted himself completely to his art, in spite of developing Parkinson disease (a disease which causes tremors in hands and difficulties in movements).

Romano lives in a house of elderly persons and even if Parkinson disease limits his manual capabilities, in fact sometimes he doesn't like the results of his efforts, but he still continues to be an artist. The image below has one of his recent sketches with charcoal, where frustrated by his lack of control over his hand movements and unhappy with the result, he covered it with charcoal.

Conclusions

In these pictures you can see some of his works. I was deeply touched by the idea of his grand-daughter Alice, daughter of his son Guido, to honour her grand-father's works and to organise this exhibition in collaboration with the Municipality of Schio.

Though Romano Benazzi remains an unknown painter, his works remain confined to the homes of his family and friends, it is important that they were celebrated by his family and community.

 

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