“The Alien is at the Bottom of the Sea,” in La Repubblica

Where Sturz breaks from his possible predecessors, and follows an ever-inevitably new path, is in his introspection into the mind and senses of a subject that's other-than-us: in his attempt to create a coherent symbolic system, to savor a language, and to imagine perceptions and emotions that are infinitely distant from ours. In this intent, his aquatic, philosophical, and intensely lyrical novel reveals itself as child of its time, which is also ours, and akin to an anthropological survey or scientific dissemination, of an Eva Meijer and an Ed Yong in their investigation of the senses of non-human beings, from cetaceans to insects, with whom we share the Earth. And if anthropomorphism is perhaps innate to every form of our thinking, it is as if the writer's thought touched the walls of the brain, and realized that they are there. From here the whole narrative begins, like a current in the middle of the sea. — Laura Pugno, Il Venerdì, La Repubblica