The old ‘inglesina’ wooden rowing boat that made him fall in love with Lake Como, and a Ferrari engine mounted on a boat that turned him into a champion.

A first mountaineering challenge at the top of the Matterhorn, and finding his only child in a forest.

A black Bentley stored at his African ranch, and sitting at the table with Allende and Pinochet in Santiago de Chile.

An unaccepted dinner invitation from a king in exile, and vegetable soup prepared by a priest’s young housekeeper.

Selling the family company ‘Standa’ for seven hundred billion lira, and reaching the North Pole with fourteen wooden sledges.

A two thousand man strong expedition to conquer the summit of Everest, and living alone in Villa del Balbianello.

Guin tells the life of an extraordinary Italian who was an entrepreneur, a mountaineer, and an explorer through stories, anecdotes and first-hand accounts. Most of all, Monzino was a man willing to challenge the impossible to make his dreams come true. After the conquest of the North Pole and the expedition to Everest, his final dream was Balbianello, a villa on Lake Como that Guido Monzino donated to the FAI.

The author

Writer and journalist Giuseppe Guin, is enjoying the best days of his life in The Writer’s nest, a former ‘ruin’ located at the site of an ancient stone quarry in the town of Faggeto Lario, Lake Como. It is here that he has written all his novels.