In early 2012, Vincenzo Latronico and Armin Linke arrived in Djibouti with the idea of reaching Addis Ababa along the railway built by Italian engineers, one of whom was an intrepid forebearer of the writer. Latronico, who grew up hearing these family stories, set out to unearth the faint traces of the Ethiopia of Fascism and Hailé Selassié, whereas Linke wanted to interpret a land of vague boundaries, lit by a dazzling light yet hard to capture in a picture. As happens in all the best travel adventures, upon discovering that they could not use the railway, the two could not but stumble upon other things: Rimbaud’s house in Harar, Chinese companies building super highways, and a private airline (owned by a mysterious woman) that exports chad, the opiate common throughout the Horn of Africa. And then there is their contact with a population poised between the lively chaos of Addis Ababa and the silence of the plateaus, where nature predominates over man. For the young writer, it was the opportunity to investigate his roots, while for Linke, a chance to question his Western gaze. For both, however, it was an opportunity to reflect on the contradictions of globalisation, viewed from an African perspective. The outcome is a travel diary in which writing and photography complement each other, offering the reader the idea of a world that may no longer be as exotic as it once was, yet that is very distant from our own: an experience that is not consumed easily and, indeed, is destined to stay with you.