One day he buys a titanium and tungsten mountain bike, a backpack with the essentials for surviving in dangerous places, a bicycle maintenance manual, a guide on nutrition needed for a long journey. And he leaves.

It's not true. One evening he gets into bed, suffering, assailed by thoughts, worries, nightmares, so he tries to relax, imagines himself on a bicycle, ready to undertake a journey, finally falls asleep and dreams. The next morning he sits down in front of the computer and starts writing.

Francesco Mancuso's "Bicycle Journey" has no time (except for the publication date: 2012), but it has plenty of space—the space of imagination, fantasy, creativity. As he emphasizes (the Guy de Maupassant quote appears on the front cover and is repeated on the first page of text), "travel is a kind of door through which one exits reality as if to penetrate an unexplored reality that seems like a dream". Thus his "Bicycle Journey" is dreamlike yet utterly realistic.

The protagonist is named Ilan, he works on the Stock Exchange, lives in a luxurious mansion, dines at the finest restaurants, wears Armani, keeps company with a model, until he breaks down, loses it, then jumps on his bike and leaves. The departure is from the city where he was born, the arrival is himself, his nature, his soul, his destiny. Between departure and arrival there will be only fractions and stages, explorations and revelations, fears and emotions, memories and hopes, stories. "Pedaling I reach halfway up the climb. The air has become thin, the bicycle groans, it's tired too, I stop, pitch my tent in a crevice and let my thoughts wander"… "Today I didn't die thanks to locust powder and water extracted from sand, I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell anyone about this journey of mine, I don't know if I'll ever be able to return to my previous life"… "We're in the rainforest, we arrive above a cliff where the water of the river we've been following plunges down into the valley"… "I pedal for hours, let my thoughts go, which slowly reclaim new fragments of memory"…

Self-published, Francesco Mancuso's "Bicycle Journey" passed from hand to hand until it arrived at the Lucos Cozza Bicycle Library in Bracciano. Libraries are destinations, goals, refuges, they transform into outposts, missions, embassies, they grant rest, respite, citizenship, promise hospitality, reading, integration. Perhaps that was the finish line of that journey (books are always journeys). A flying one, intermediate, final? Who knows.