In search of the Matterhorn

Abstract

The story of Walter Bonatti and his mountaineering and literary legacy starts from an event, duly fictionalized, which has as its background the Poland of the 1980s and the living conditions in a country beyond the Iron Curtain, where even finding information or being able to get close to “the sources” could be a problem. Going to loot or shoplift a library, an act in itself more than execrable, could at the time be a last resort for those who craved knowledge, or even one of the various gestures of impatience and silent rebellion against the regime by a historically indomitable population unwilling to have leadership figures that were not their own. Marek “Regan” Raganowicz grew up in that culture and society, and in his stories he loves so much to refer to the period of his growth and the beloved contradictions of his revered homeland.