“Queen of flowers and pearls” is a long voyage in time and in space that narrates the life and the vicissitudes of an Ethiopian family during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (the period of Mengistù Hailé Mairam’s dictatorship) and during the subsequent decade when they are emigrants. Out of the novel came the idea of creating a narrative performance which intertwines a plurality of voices. On the one hand, there is a narration of the violent passage of Italian colonialism in the life of the author’s maternal family; on the other, different stories from the novel are inserted for the audience through short readings. Both narrative and readings are combined with traditional Ethiopian songs sung by the author herself. Ghermandi has emphasized how storytelling creates an intimacy between strangers and allows the audience and the storyteller to viscerally share the same emotions.