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Winner of the 2013 ITAS prize
Winner of the 2011 Leggimontagna literary prize (fiction), 9th edition
Shortlisted for the “Exploration and Voyages” category of the 2011 Gambrinus “Giuseppe Mazzotti” prize (29th edition).

Mario Casella
Nero-bianco-nero
Un viaggio tra le montagne e la storia del Caucaso
Saggio/Resoconto di viaggio
15×21 cm, 240 pp
ISBN 978-88-87469-73-8

Mario Casella
Black-White-Black
A voyage in time through the Caucasian mountains
Essay/Travel report

After the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Olympic flame passed on to Sochi, a Russian city on the western edge of the Caucasus. A spotlight was thus shone on the southern border of the Russian Federation: the media started focusing on the tensions between Russia and Georgia, on the acts of terrorism in the Caucasus republics, and on the debate around the works for the Olympic Games in Sochi.
Journalist and mountain guide Mario Casella, and Russian alpinist Alexey Shustrov have undertaken a journey – mostly by ski – across the boundless Caucasus chain: a dangerous area where several ethnic and political groups stand on the brink of chaos.
The report of their adventure comes to life thanks to the vivid depictions of strange people and unexpected circumstances. Beyond the majestic mountains’ horizon, the scars of the past and the unstable balance of the present are painfully conspicuous.
Black-White-Black is the journal of an outstanding mountain adventure; an exclusive report straight out of the Caucasian tinderbox.

Mario Casella (1959) has a degree in Arts and Philosophy and has been a mountaineer since his boyhood. In 1985 he obtained the federal qualification of mountain guide and started to work occasionally as a journalist. He then became a full-time journalist, working for the radio and for RSI, the Swiss public broadcasting organisation in Italian language. He has worked on several documentaries and reportages, mostly abroad: he documented the fall of the Berlin wall and covered the events that took place in former East Germany and Eastern countries, in Russia, Chernobyl, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, and so on. In 2011 he published Black-White-Black. A voyage in time through the Caucasian mountains, which was awarded the following prizes: Winner of the ITAS prize 2013, Winner of the Leggimontagna2011 literary prize (narrative), 9th edition, and Recommended book for the “Exploration and Voyages” category of the Gambrinus “Giuseppe Mazzotti” prize 2011 (29th edition).

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No longer available:  German