Hailed as a masterpiece upon its initial publication in Italy, Blindly is a novel of highly original, poetic intensity, a Jacob's Ladder reversed to descend into the nether regions of history and, in particular, of the twentieth century. In a shifting, choral monologue-part confession, part psychiatric session-a man recounts (invents, falsifies, hides, screams out) his life, which has passed through the horrors, the hopes and betrayals, and the revolutions of the last century, as well as through widely different lands and seas. Who is the mysterious narrator of Blindly? He is clearly a detainee and a fugitive. He is Jorgen Jorgenson, the nineteenth-century adventurer who was briefly king of Iceland and later condemned to forced labor in the antipodes. But, he is also Comrade Cippico, militant Italian communist, imprisoned for years in Tito's gulag on the "naked island" of Goli Otok. And, he is all the partisans, prisoners, seamen, and rebels who experience the perils and injustices of persecution, war, violence, and adventure.
