This story comes from something real, and that’s why it never let me go.
Many years ago, in a library, I came across an old booklet from 1914 written by Guglielmo Bertagnolli. Inside it was a forgotten story: the story of Leonardo Perizalli, a very wealthy chancellor from Val di Non, accused of witchcraft and burned alive in 1614 in front of the Black Palace of Coredo.
As I read those pages, I felt that his voice had never truly disappeared.
Leonardo Perizalli was not a monster. He was an educated, powerful, inconvenient man.
I felt the need to give him a name that was no longer tied to trials and accusations.
I called him Assareto.
That was the beginning of everything.
In 2011, I published The Treasure of Air.
In 2012, Assareto was released.
And in 2024, I completed the journey with Assareto and the Wax Mirrors, finally bringing a story to its full circle, a story that could not be left unfinished.
But Assareto does not live only in the past.
In the present, he meets Maria.
Maria is 20 years old.
She is a medical student.
Her life is made of science, exams, certainty.
A future doctor must be rational, must believe in data, in facts, in what can be proven.
Maria does not believe in ghosts.
She never has.
And then she hears a voice.
A voice that should not exist.
A deep, calm, lucid voice.
Assareto’s voice.
From that moment on, everything fractures.
Her certainties, her categories, her defenses.
Maria becomes confused, disoriented.
She no longer knows whether to trust what she has always studied or what she is now feeling.
And this is the real turning point: not the ghost, but doubt.
Assareto does not force her.
He does not frighten her.
He waits.
He observes.
He speaks like a man who has had centuries to think.
According to me, and this is simply what I think, women immediately understand that this is not a story about fear.
It is a story about listening.
About memory.
About denied justice.
And about an impossible love that crosses time without asking permission.
Today, this story has taken another step forward.
In 2025, the translated edition was released, making Assareto available to an international audience.
It is as if a voice that had remained silent for centuries has finally found a way to be heard beyond its homeland.
I did not invent Assareto for fashion or trend.
I brought him back to light through real documents, real places, a real story that someone had decided to erase.
And at a certain point, I understood that he was no longer mine alone.
He was ready to go into the world.
ON AMAZON
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