Tiziano Terzani
Un Altro Giro Di Giostra

Each of us fears death.

For us Westerners, talking about it has become a real taboo, an uncomfortable and extremely unpleasant topic, and above all, an event that does not concern us personally, as if it were something that only happens to others. Precisely for this reason, when it inevitably affects us closely, whether it's the loss of a relative, a friend, or a serious illness, it catches us unprepared and completely defenseless, at the mercy of despair and unheard-of suffering.
Yet understanding death means also understanding life, existence and non-existence are two sides of the same coin. The philosophies and Eastern religions, it is no mystery, have a very different approach regarding death, certainly much more aware and serene.

This book is the account of its author on yet another journey of his, but this time not as a journalist and correspondent for Der Spiegel or Repubblica, but as a free private citizen who, upon falling ill with cancer, seizes the opportunity to wander through his beloved Asia in search of alternative medicines to the devastating chemotherapy, initially undertaken in New York, and above all, in search of himself. The New York described by Tiziano Terzani (1938-2004) is a city without an identity or soul, an emblem of that Western world where nothing matters to the individual except money, materialistic self-fulfillment, and well-being at all costs, where others are only strangers, aliens.
His itinerary continues, after the United States, among Indian Ashrams, Swamis, healers, alleged charlatans and not, among reiki, ayurveda, fasts, and Vedic rites, not as a tourist but as an integral part of a Spartan daily life, free from trappings and conventions typical of our way of thinking and conceiving life, and the journey becomes an introspection, an exploration of one's consciousness, of one's Ego that has deep and dark roots, that Ego that we all know we have but whose true essence we ignore. 

As you read, the sensation grows that you are not dealing with a simple diary but a human document of exceptional philosophical intensity, written in a fluid, direct, and wittily critical style, with no shadow of austerity and with clear awareness of one's situation and one's limits and weaknesses. From such reading, one emerges richer internally and culturally, ready to question everything in which we believed to find an answer to our fears, our unhappiness, determined to learn to love and understand ourselves because if we want to understand and love others, there is no other way.