Lo Stregone
One night, one restaurant, one brigade. A choral novel about a chef worshipped like a prophet, and the mystery that surrounds him.
A polyphonic novel, fierce and compassionate, contemporary and surprising.
Antonio Franchini
It is a novel about the sacred, about ritual, about the need for transcendence that we look for at the bottom of a plate. Lo Stregone watches the faithful before an empty altar.
Andrea Minuz · Il Foglio
Rielli’s new novel is contemporary because it uses a specific, hyper-specialised microcosm (here, MasterChef-style fine dining) to lay bare the neuroses, the obsessions and the physics of power of the performance society.
Allonsanfàn
Rielli moves naturally from the technical lexicon of the kitchen, dense with fine-dining terms, to a more literary language rich in quotations, all the way to colloquial speech and dialect inflections (…) There is a masterstroke in the ending. Just when the voices seem exhausted and the portrait of the Stregone seems complete, Rielli lets something surprisingly simple emerge — and, precisely for that reason, immensely powerful.
Marianna Inserra · Critica Letteraria
Who is the Sorcerer, really? Some see Francesco Minervini as a visionary who changed the way we think about food, others as a guru at the head of a cult; some praise his ability to reach the very essence of life, others see a manipulator; some remember his first restaurant going up in flames, and some would do anything for a taste of his cooking. What is certain is that Bíos — his restaurant — is about to live through the most important night in its history, the one that will decide whether it can go on existing or is destined to disappear, taking its founder and his secrets with it.
