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Una Terra Amata
In 1934, the famous Hungarian explorer Lász ló Ede de Almásy organized his third and last expedition dedicated to the search for the legendary oasis of Zerzura in the Libyan Desert. The books by Almásy and Hansjoachim Von der Esch and the journalistic articles by Ugo Dadone and Hassan Sobhi narrate the expedition sponsored by the Royal Automobile Club d’Egypte and by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. Not destined for the general public, there is also a fifth story generated by the confidential documents of the Italian government that was interested in the diplomatic implications of the expedition through Egypt, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Libya. These documents, conserved in the Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also include a secret report by Ugo Dadone. This report describes in detail the journey of the motorized caravan led by Almásy.
By reconstructing the history of the expedition and the reasons for Ugo Dadone’s participation, a man of a thousand lives and a thousand adventures, the two reports are made available to the reader passionate about the Desert, the first surviving in a single copy made up of newspaper clippings, the second finally translated from Arabic. Therefore, Dadone and Sobhi’s writings are accessible again almost a century later, in a completely transformed world, even in the silent depths of the Sahara.
