Levante publisher, year 2004

Published for the first time in 1987 and winner of the National Award "Marina di Palese", the novel was reissued in 2004 enriched with a new chapter at the beginning of the story. A chapter that returns to the reader the code of ethics of Champion man, Mario Cavalli wrote in the brief introduction to the text.
The novel is an autobiographical account, set in Bari during the Allied occupation. On the threshold of youth a teenager observes with watchful eyes, now moved, now outraged, now smiling, but always sharing, the stories and dramas of everyday life in his city.

INCIPIT CHAPTER I

It was a long hot summer, sun and sea, that of '43.
The days had exhausted languor and our fifteen years we did feel mysterious and restless the first thrills of love. From unknown planet and alien girls became a world to explore the fascinating lure and overbearing.
The certainties of which we were fed until then, as hostile distrust towards the opposite sex, the strong conviction of our male superiority, the fights specious in the manner of ordeals tribal, were about to shatter.
The walls of Jericho of our strong beliefs that girls were more annoying than anything else, and in which we were lying in a protected and safe as armored casing, showed cracks deepening and foreshadowed failures for another expected in our unconscious.
Stirred in us ancestral calls and unknown disturbances of which we were reluctant to talk to each other, almost a shame to hide.
The pack was solid and compact as before. But only in appearance. In fact there was moving clumsy and awkward, every man alone and all together, involved a complicity not expressed but felt.
The sea full-throated laughter girls, the smiles just winking but rich in ancient coquetry, Games often allusive, the movements of their bodies unripe but ready and willing to bloom, left us restless and fascinated. An attraction he gave us no respite, and we wanted to reject in the name of the compact solidity of our world of boys, but it was not possible to.
Loomed so fatal defeats for which there was more despite that feeling of failure.
Until then we had been alone with Ulysses had himself tied to the mast to resist the siren song. Now we were more on the side of the companions of Ulysses with melodious chants of call of the sirens were ready to surrender.