Branchie

Marco Donati, a young Italian man with terminal cancer, is stuck in an uneasy life and refuses to follow the path others expect from him. When an invitation draws him to India for work connected to aquariums, he leaves home and enters a situation that quickly stops making ordinary sense.

What begins as a fairly grounded setup turns into a chain of bizarre, escalating, and often violent episodes. Marco is pulled through strange encounters, chaotic detours, explicit humor, and increasingly surreal situations that mix travel, crime, sex, music, and grotesque comedy.

As the plot grows more unruly, the book becomes less about realism than about momentum, exaggeration, and transformation. Marco’s journey pushes him toward a new perspective on life, while the ending provides a closing explanation and a darker sense of what the title suggests.