2023-10-17 15:13:16
Time.news – After the editorial success throughout Europe of ‘Black Ocean’, ‘The Queen of Babylon’ arrives in bookstores today, the new adventure of Corto Maltese published in Italy by Cong Edizioni. We find Corto in Venice (with a declared homage to its creator Hugo Pratt) in 2002 when a new war breaks out in Iraq and in the lagoon city Bosnians, Serbs and others meet to weave their web of trafficking.
If in ‘Black Ocean’ the event that shook the world was the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, here, in addition to the second Gulf War which is about to begin and which will lead to the fall of Saddam Hussein, there is also the conflict in the background in the former Yugoslavia just concluded but still with its aftermath of hatred and ethnic revenge. The creative duo formed by the designer Bastien Vives and the screenwriter Martin Quenehen continues their journey of reinterpretation to the present day (complete with big fashion brands in the background) of the great character of Pratt, with the second act of a parallel universe of Corto Maltese.
The Short of ‘The Queen of Babylon’ is less brazen, at least in his facial features, than the sailor who spoke with the Quatzeocatl skull in ‘Mu’, one of Pratt’s original stories, but his approach to life remains the same; that of those who play hide and seek with death by never hiding (even a finger will be cut off).
(Corto Maltese, ‘The Queen of Babylon – Cong Edizioni)
In this story that does not provide a happy ending, Corto also gives in to love for the first time, conquered by the beautiful and mysterious Semira (“What if we disappeared, you and me alone?” is the phrase that opens ‘The Queen of Babylon’ accompanied by a passionate kiss), leader of a gang of Bosnian arms dealers. But the protagonist is aware that love is impossible and that it will always emerge, from where one can least expect it, a pointed gun, a spear, a rifle, a grin capable of obscuring that attempt at love, perhaps forever. Captured by CIA agents, he will find himself imprisoned in a secret site in the middle of occupied Iraq.
(Corto Maltese, ‘The Queen of Babylon – Cong Edizioni)
The villain of this new story is inspired by a real-life character: Ismet Bajramovic known as Celo, a man deeply linked to crime who during the siege of Sarajevo joined the Bosnian forces to defend the city and at the end of the war returned to the banks of the Drina to take back his numerous and illegal businesses. It was around that time that the ‘New York Times’ called him the “Godfather” of Sarajevo.
A Godfather who lived half his life with a heart half destroyed by a bullet, who committed suicide in 2008, but not before having founded a literary magazine in prison. Also among the real-life figures are rock star photographer Annie Leibowitz, photographer of rock starsand among others, Gina Haspel, the first woman appointed by Donald Trump as head of the CIA.
(Corto Maltese, ‘The Queen of Babylon – Cong Edizioni)
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