A novel about the marvellous madness of cycling

Fabio is twenty-four years old and studies law, even though his heart isn’t really in it. One day he is sent to the mountains to do community service as an alternative to the draft and is assigned to a retirement home for old priests, run by an eighty-year-old former missionary: a gruff and moody man who barely leaves his room having lost interest in everything. Nonetheless they share passion for cycling and start watching the Giro d’Italia together, identifying in Marco Pantani the incarnation of a dream: a brave man, tormented and alone, facing colossal champions. Thanks to this marvellous madness, Fabio and Don Basagni will find in themselves the courage buried within them to question the solid, reliable existence they were accustomed to put up with.