Anyone who tries to look for Terramafiusa on today’s maps will not find it. Until a few years ago it was a small principality hidden in the mountains of central Europe. There, surrounded by a court of modest officials, lived Oreste, the prince of Terramafiusa, who learned how to smile at the age of twenty and has never stopped since.
This is the story of his smile and how he obtained it, aided by the wise subterfuges of Lucien, the centenary parrot of grandmother Palmira, by the clumsiness of the corpulent prime minister Camillo, a lover of substantial meals and long naps, and by the love of Violante, the beautiful lady-in-waiting.
As in his paintings, Domenico Gnoli fills the tables with minute details, often hidden, sometimes curious (what is the dachshund Marcantonio doing in this story?), which seem to push us to look again and again, always discovering something new.
In this book, the only one he has written and illustrated, Gnoli tells how, sometimes, the different curvature of a smile is enough to change the course of history and give a new meaning to the world.