Felice Benuzzi was born in Vienna in 1910 and grew up in Trieste, doing his early mountaineering in the Julian Alps. He studied law at the University of Rome and represented Italy as an international swimmer in 1933-35. He served in the Italian Colonial Service in Abyssinia until his imprisonment in 1941, and wrote both the English and Italian versions of No Picnic on Mount Kenya during the last years of his captivity. Following the conclusion of the war he worked as a diplomat, including with the United Nations. He died in Rome in 1988.
"[No Picnic on Mount Kenya] crackles with the same dry humor as its
title. It contains the prison-yard bartering and candlelight
stitching that mark a classic jailbreak yarn; the encounters with
wild beasts in Mount Kenya's forest belt are as gripping, and the
descriptions of sparkling glaciers as awe-inspiring, as any passage
in the great exploration diaries of the early twentieth
century."--The Economist
"A first-rate humanistic account that should quite simply be
considered a classic of Italian literature."--Pietro Spirito, Il
Piccolo
"A hymn to mountaineering and adventure."--Marco Valle, Il
Secolo
"A most extraordinary prisoner-of-war and escape story."--The New
Yorker
"Benuzzi's sketches and his glorious writing and humor make this an
incomparable tribute to camaraderie and daring."
--Jane Manaster, San Francisco Book Review
"More electrifying than anything a person with a nose for real
adventure could hope to read."--Piero Melati, Repubblica
"Mr. Benuzzi's paradoxical mixture of pride and self-mocking
humility is attractive: his courage is amazing; his story,
dramatic."--The New York Times
"There are dangerous adventures, and then there's the story of
Felice Benuzzi and his fellow Italian soldiers escaping a British
POW camp because, 'one had only to start taking risks again.' It's
a strange and exciting story."--Men's Journal
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