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Marinella Perroni presents and talks about her book in the company of Cesare Agosta «Talking on the phone with Michela, even just chatting, or spending hours on the sofa at my house stringing together challenging conversations that were never finished, or at her house, in front of a plate of fish soup, or even at the Il Cambio restaurant in Trastevere sitting at that little table that had now become “hers”: all this was one of the greatest joys of the years in which Michela Murgia and I spent time together. Ten: too few for everything we had to say to each other. This is why so many conversations remained pending, only hinted at. At least, this was the impression, because with her you could go on for hours in a game of continuous references and changes of direction, of leaps forward and pauses. Sometimes it seemed that a theme was the common thread, other times that the words themselves were drawing the texture of the thought. The absence of her voice made the public debate poorer. In me it continues to resonate, however, even if I know very well that our conversations of the past are no longer possible." When someone leaves us, there is often the regret of what we did not have time to say; the thoughts we would have liked to share remain suspended in an unbridgeable void. However, that of absence is a transcendent and fruitful dimension in which what is no longer possible becomes, at times, possible. This is the dimension in which theologian Marinella Perroni moves to pick up the thread of the conversations started with her friend Michela Murgia on the most disparate topics, always guided by that search for God that united them until the end. From their comparison arise reflections of such broad scope that they resonate outside of space and time, capable of illuminating and orienting our present. Sabina Fadel on the Messenger of Saint Anthony: Making absence a presence: is it possible? This is what Marinella Perroni, theologian and biblical scholar, tries to do in this dense and beautiful book, giving substance to the words of the Gospel of John (see John 14:15-21) referring to Jesus, but above all carrying out a very human operation: that of someone who, putting together memory and imagination, continues, albeit in a different way, with those who have passed away, that intimate and profound conversation had in life. "Because memory - writes Perroni - is much more alive than recollection, and only imagination can overcome the fixity of recollection and transfigure it into memory" ensuring that death does not have the last word. Continued...