By: Axel Munthe

More than ninety years have gone by since the first edition of The Story of San Michele came out. It was 1929, a moment of world crisis, poverty and unemployment. And it was thanks to the English publisher, John Murray, who had the courage to propose a vision of hope–for even then it must have appeared incongruous and anachronistic–that it really was considered “the story of another way of life”.

Although the author was already famous, literary critics expressed their surprise in various ways: they defined the book as “ unusual ”, stressing how difficult it was to catalogue it as autobiography, as a book of medical or philosophical memoirs, as a travel book or merely as a novel. But whatever the category it belonged to, its message was overwhelming!

It became a best-seller and is still being translated into every language.

Ninety years-and yet today we are going through another world crisis, with the risk of the new generations precipitating into the abyss of indifference and aggressive, dangerous and ignorant intolerance–this time an impoverishment of the mind and spirit.

(From the introduction by Katriona Munthe)