Giocare a scacchi con la morte. L'Oriente come investigazione impossibile in "René Leys"

"Oriente, storia di una figura nelle arti occidentali" opens the new series "Studi Inter Artes" books of the association Sigismondo Malatesta. The book consists of two volumes; the second volume, prefaced by Loretta Innocenti, focuses on the art and literature between turn-of-the-century exoticism and the present experiences. Zecchi's "Giocare a scacchi con la morte" is a vast analytical study: it shows the set of mirrors and duplications in a great "chinese" novel of Segalen, “René Leys”. The author sees China before the Revolution through the eyes of his young heroes and ironic voice and anonymous first-person narrator.