Alessandro Boffa

Alessandro Boffa was born in 1955 in Moscow, Russia, he studied biology in Italy and worked at an animal genetics lab. until the less than glamorous realities of rat and frog reproduction made him reconsider. Switching his focus to the human brain he soon found himself equally exhausted by "thinking about thinking" Than fate intervened. A soaring stock price granted him an unexpected escape. What began as a two-week vacation stretched into a fifteen year odissy, one year in California, the rest in Asia. In Thailand he dabbled in gemology, managed a restaurant and ran a tiny island restaurant though most days were spent fishing and simply breathing. A habit of writing long rambling poscards to friends eventually sparkled a suggestion: why not write something longer? The result was a travel story about an impossible to steer camel that always went in pursuit of lady camels and that made him realize that writing could be fun. This led to his debut novel "You are an animal, Viskovitz" (1998) that was translated in over 20 languages. After a long silence he's back with some illustrated short stories.