Leonardo Piccione, Insegnare a nuotare a una foca. Viaggio insolito nella lingua islandese (Milano: UTET, 2024)

This book is titled after an Icelandic proverb, “að kenna selnum að synda” (teaching a seal how to swim), and is labelled as an “unusual journey in the Icelandic language”. The main bookshop in my native town has placed it on the shelves of the Linguistics section. Actually, it is far from being a book of linguistics. It is, rather, a collection of charming tales, encounters, personal experiences, and other digressions that depart from rhapsodically selected expressions or rules of the Icelandic language. The author is an Italian who has been living in Iceland for seven years, and for sure, is a brilliant storyteller of his own experience of Icelandizing himself. I would love to meet Leonardo in a pub and listen to his stories.