The fall

'Knowing how to fall is much more valuable than knowing how to walk.' The Fall is a memoir like no other. Its 424 short texts match the number of steps taken by Diogo Mainardi's son Tito as he walks, with great difficulty, with his father around Venice, the city where the disastrous birth took place that left him with cerebral palsy. It is the story of a father and his love for his handicapped son, bristling with family history, art, literature and ideas. From Marcel Proust to Neil Young, Sigmund Freud to Humpty Dumpty, Renaissance Venice to the camp at Auschwitz, Mainardi charts the trajectory of the Western world, with Tito at its centre, showing how his fate has been shaped by history.