From the bestselling author in Italy comes the only novel featuring Galileo.

Florence, 1631. The Plague, the Inquisition. A young nun studies the skies above. Only a scientist can shed light in on the darkness of reason.

Florence, 1631. Barely a century has passed since Martin Luther unraveled Christian unity. Europe is a battlefield. The Catholic Church’s fight against heresy is bitter and the plague that descended from the North rages throughout Italy. People are forced to stay inside their houses, doctors guard the streets, the Grand Duke of Tuscany allows only religious processions and blatant acts of penance.

Only a grumpy old man, his vision now blurry, dares to defy the Grand Duke’s laws by going out, wearing a leather apron in order to take care of his vineyards. It is Galileo Galilei: the man who by perfecting a Dutch invention, the telescope, has discovered the imperfect surface of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus. He experiments with the motion of the pendulum and on the fall of bodies — and he is now publishing a work that threatens to subvert the place of humankind in the cosmos.