Marta Palazzesi: Hello, my name is Marta Palazzesi. I'm an Italian author and I'm here to talk to you about Mist, which is my novel. Mist is set in London in 1880 so we are talking about Victorian age with all its complications, contrast, and problems, mainly due to the industrial revolution. So we had very wealthy people on one side and very poor and neglected people on the other side.

So my main inspiration for writing the novel were actually my two dogs. At a certain point I wanted to write a story about the relationship between humans and animals, and this relationship is not always easy. You know, if you have a domestic pet, maybe the relationship is pleasant, it's good, it's easy. But when it comes to wild animals and coexistence between humans and wild animals things can get more complicated. So I wanted to explore this kind of topic with my book.

One of my other inspirations for this book were the books of Charles Dickens, and he's one of my favorite author ever. So this was one of my inspirations. And so I began to make researches about poor people in London, which doesn't sound really fun, and it's not fun at all. But I found out some interesting things. For example, I had no idea that in that time there were people so poor that the only job they can find, which wasn't actually a job, was dig into the muddy banks of the River Thames finding and looking for whatever objects and items they can find, and trying to sell these objects to the black market, or trying to trade these objects for food. And they were called mud larks.

So our main character is actually a mud lark, a 13-year-old boy. So Clay is living his life with his best friends on the Thames. They're digging on the muddy banks of the river, trying to find objects, trying to sell them, trying to survive. And one day Clay finds himself with a beautiful deck of tarot cards, beautiful design, beautiful, bright colors. So he decided to try to sell them in the circus that has just arrived into town. And this circus, furthermore, is claiming to have a very, very interesting attraction which is the last living wolf in the United Kingdom.

So he goes to the circus in order to sell the cards, but he actually wants to see the wolf and he sees the wolf. And when he sees this beautiful, wild animal in such a tiny, tiny cage, something snaps into him and he decides that his purpose, his goal, is to free this animal. But it's not so easy. I mean, the easy part is to, you know, open the cage. It's not a big deal for him, open a cage. But the problem is make this animal, a mistreated animal, which sees in the humankind his worst enemy, make him understand that Clay is not his enemy, but is a friend and wants, actually, to help him.

So the focus on the book, you as readers can find whatever theme or message or whatever you like, for me was the relationship, how it can be very, very difficult to balance a relationship between animals and humans. And this is the problem for Clay. Not just open the cage, but, "What do I do once I've opened the cage and the wolf is free? How can I actually help him?"

And now I'm going to read out loud from Mist.

Old Sal took a long drag on his pipe. For a moment his face disappeared behind a thick wall of smoke. "The world is full of injustices, Clay," he started again. "Too many to think of changing it, but no battle is more important than any other battle. What really matters is the battle you choose to fight. However small, insignificant, or pointless it might seem compared to all the disgusting things in the world, in the end, it'll be the all that remains of you." Old Sal got up from his chair and walked to the door.