History is full of witnesses unaware of the events that have changed the course of humanity. Valerio Massimo Manfredi knows it well. Almost like the famous Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, his literary work has always been focused on the "humble", on those apparently supporting actors on the great stage of the world, but able to give us back a clearer and simpler look, more realistic and anti- rhetorical. In a word, more human. Son of landless peasants in the Galilee under the Roman yoke, the protagonist of this story is forced to earn a living inventing new jobs. Sailor with no luck, woodcutter and carpenter, winegrower at the service of a small landowner. Eventually he decides to start his own business, and open up a promising inn. It seems the story of an ordinary man and of his inventiveness in the atmosphere of a new era, in which many things are changing. And so it is: something absolutely new, unthinkable and shocking is happening around him. The novelty of a preaching, of a testimony that will forever change History, and that has the human features of the son of a carpenter from Nazareth. Their meeting takes place during a wedding banquet at Cana. The host is in charge of the wine, but unfortunately he run out of it. He will then be the privileged witness of a fact that he will hardly, or rather he will not, be able to explain. But his relationship with the Nazarene and his strange disciples do not end there. Some time later, during the Passover in Jerusalem, they will come again to ask some wine: to celebrate what seems to be a sad night for a farewell supper…
Valerio Massimo Manfredi launch the Wingsbert House series dedicated to the great writers of the past and the present that write about wine, its history, its philosophy. With an archaeological training, Manfredi is one of the most widely read and beloved Italian writers in the world. He is also a cinema scriptwriter and television presenter. His latest novel, the sequel of Odysseus. The Oath. (Mondadori) came out in the Italian bookstores in September 2013.
