Melbourne’s Italian Institute of Culture and Connor Court Publishing will be launching The Heart and the Abyss – The Life of Felice Benuzzi by Rory Steele, who will be present for the occasion, on Thursday 18 August at 6 pm at the Italian Institute , 233 Domain Road, South Yarra (rsvp to Bruno Mascitelli or phone (03) 9214 5363). Felice Benuzzi (1910-1988) represented Italy as a swimmer (breaststroke), colonial adminstrator and diplomat. His best-known exploit, recounted in his No Picnic on Mount Kenya (1947) and here in an interview for the RAI (1987), was to break out of his POW camp in 1943 to scale the second-highest mountain in Africa, with no maps and only handmade gear, returning to the camp to report to a bemused British commandant seventeen days later (the col between Point Dutton and the Petit Gendarme on Mount Kenya was named Benuzzi Col in his honour). Decorated for bravery in combat, he served as consul in Berlin and ambassador to Uruguay, ending his career as Head of the Italian Delegation for the Antarctic. A passionate mountaineer, he was a founder-member of the environmental group Mountain Wilderness. The author of this biography, Rory Steele, was Australia’s ambassador to Italy 1997-2001.