Lo Stregone

The book

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.

The decisive hours that make up this novel, however, are not told by the Sorcerer himself but by the members of his brigade: Aurora, the front-of-house manager who knows the intimacy of every guest; Edoardo, the brilliant, self-destructive sommelier, perhaps the Chef's only true friend; Monica, the Sorcerer's partner and the manager running Bíos's fragile empire; Roberta, the young cook who gave up an entirely different destiny; Mauro, the dishwasher who has landed in a world he doesn't understand; Gabriele, working for free in the name of a dream; Luciano, who has been handed an unexpected second chance — and, alongside them, an eighty-kilo wild boar whose only fault was taking a wrong turn.

At the tables there are those filming for millions of followers, those ordering bottles as expensive as jewellery, and a father and son who talk past each other yet end up at the centre of everyone's attention. In this sweeping choral novel, Rielli moves deftly between registers — dramatic and comic, psychological and surreal — orchestrating distant voices and points of view into a compelling literary machine in which every member of the brigade holds a fragment of the answer to the question it all starts from: who is the Sorcerer really, what secret is he hiding, and above all, what does his mystery say about us?