Fabio Deotto, interviewing Elvia Wilk in Mantua's Basilica di Santa Barbara, defines her new book as “able to add colours to the world we draw in our minds.” In fact, Wilk's aim is to provide new perspectives on the way we think about the role of man in nature. “We are used to reducing everything that belongs to the non-human world to background noise,” the author says. According to the traditional way men perceive and represent themselves, people are the only lively characters in a passive world. Instead, Wilk wants to underline the interconnection and interdependence that exists between man and landscape.

She conveys this idea through short stories: in Death by Landscape (which gives the book its title) the protagonist is transformed into a plant. The Wall tells the story of a woman who believes she is the last human on earth and is able to engage in an entirely new relationship with her farm animals. Natural entities thus show their personality without losing their non-human nature.

This book was not meant to talk about the author. Although, she says, she eventually became more and more part of it, until the last short story: A Book Explodes. There she gave her characters to live action role players, who decided what to do with them almost independently. “Literature”, she says, “can have its own life outside the cover of the book.” The surprising result was that both author and role players had imagined the same ending.

In a book that is able to change perspectives and overturn misconceptions, the author’s scepticism emerges. “I am not delusional enough to believe literature can bring down ethical, political and social systems” she admits. But even if literature can't solve climate change, it might be a way to examine the distinctions between man and nature.