Edmondo De Amicis (1846-1908) was an Italian writer, novelist, poet, journalist and freemason. His best-known book, Cuore, a children's novel translated into English as Heart, was an absolute best seller in Italy for over a hundred years and is still today considered one of the masterpieces of Italian literature.
Holland and its People by Edmondo De Amicis, written in 1874, is an extraordinary travel reportage. The great Italian writer is a man who looks far ahead, who lets himself be driven by curiosity about the things of the world, more a journalist than a storyteller. Able to accompany us in the life and history of a country with the sympathy and empathy of a more experienced friend.
«Whoever looks for the first time at a large map of Holland, wonders that a country so constituted can continue to exist. At the first glance, it is difficult to say whether land or water predominates, or whether Holland belongs most to the continent or to the sea. Those broken and compressed coasts, those deep bays, those great rivers that, losing the aspect of rivers, seem bringing new seas to the sea; and that sea, which, changing itself into rivers, penetrates the land and breaks it into archipelagoes; the lakes, the vast morasses, the canals crossing and recrossing each other, all combine to give the idea of a country that may at any moment disintegrate and disappear». «…interminable bulkwarks of earth, granite, and wood were there to attest the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Hollanders, it would not be believed that the hand of man could, even in many centuries have accomplished such a work».
