Like a flash of light [Italian]

By Cosimo Corsa

Good evening, everyone.

I'd like to begin with a question-one that I'm sure has kept many of you awake at least once in your lives.

Have you ever looked at your life-a life that may be perfect, stable, carefully built stone by stone through hard work and success-and suddenly been overwhelmed by a strange, quiet, almost guilty sense of restlessness? That unsettling feeling when your comfort zone stops being a refuge and becomes a padded cage, where you can no longer smell the fragrance of the world, where routine slowly extinguishes every sense of wonder.

The protagonist of my novel, Like a Flash of Light, finds himself at exactly that point.

He has everything: a respected career, a family, a beautiful home. And yet, he feels that his life has become a desert devoid of meaning.

So he does something that today's society would consider reckless, even unforgivable. He takes an unpaid month off work, turns his back on the icy kitchen where his wife is threatening to leave him, and runs away.

He becomes a spiritual fugitive.

He boards a train to Umbria, to Assisi, searching for someone who can help him recover the clear-eyed wonder of childhood-the ability to stand in awe before the simple miracle of being alive.

But this is not your typical New Age travel memoir.

It is a relentless investigation.

Among the monasteries and cloisters perched on Mount Subasio, he encounters extraordinary people who strip away every one of his certainties.

There is Brother Romeo, a red-bearded monk with eyes as dark as tar, who leads him into the "dark night of the soul."

There is Sister Uma, the daughter of a Brahmin from Varanasi, who reveals how both neuroscience and the ancient traditions of India dissect the illusion of the self.

And there is old Pinchas, a restorer of ancient manuscripts, who teaches him that truth is found not by adding more, but by taking things away.

The journey reaches its climax in the "Room of Waiting," a deep cave hidden inside the mountain.

There, when the flashlight is switched off, the protagonist undergoes what may be the most terrifying experience for a modern Western man:

being completely alone with himself.

In that darkness, time comes to a standstill, the ego collapses, and beneath the rubble of all the masks we wear, something finally ignites.

A flash of light.

I wrote this novel because I believe that self-exploration is both the greatest challenge and the greatest privilege of being human.

I wanted to bring Christian mysticism into dialogue with Indian philosophy-not to offer ready-made answers or religious dogmas, but to explore the hidden landscape that every one of us carries within.

If you, too, have ever felt yourself slipping into the monotony of everyday life, if you, too, are searching for a meaning that goes beyond the materialistic consumerism that surrounds us every day, then this book is a journey we can walk together.

I hope you'll dare to switch off the flashlight-and somewhere within these pages, discover your own flash of light.

Thank you.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Italian
• ISBN: B0H9MFPRBK
• ISBN13: 9798187567904
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 82 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"