The Great Blue Horse: A Review

While a far-right city council evicts the statue of Marco Cavallo from Muggia—that symbol of Basaglia's revolution—and mental illness spreads exponentially across a world convulsed by pandemic, war, and economic collapse, this small jewel of a book turns ten. The story unfolds through Paolo, son of the laundress who works at San Giovanni, the only child living inside the Trieste asylum, where the grounds are fenced, the windows barred, the doors locked: the mad cannot leave. Besides his grandfather and Ernesto (his schoolmate "Saba"), Paolo has one true friend: Marco, an aging workhorse hauling laundry, food scraps, and cast-off things from ward to ward. Then two events shatter the routine: the threat of slaughter hanging over Marco, and the arrival of a new doctor ("mad as a horse and stubborn as the wind") determined to tear down those gates. In a play of shadows and color, this is a book where the languages, rhythms, and rooms of the asylum transform into the language, rhythm, and setting of a fairy tale.