The king of the world

The king of the world

“The king of the world” “It is the title that Francesco Saverio Vetere has chosen for this new novel, and within which there is in full the meaning of his life, of his youth, of his experience as a great communicator and witness of his time. A sort of modern fairy tale that tells of nine peers who grow together in a small town and who are educated to philosophy from an early age by a young teacher. But education for philosophical thought does not allow them to accept the common beliefs of their country without criticism. They therefore question first very small things, then the very sense of the fundamental beliefs of the society in which they live. Then they also build legends on past stories, inspired by the principle of research as a fundamental feature of the human being.

When their master Guido leaves to go to teach the boys abroad continue their growth path. Seven of them remain in the country and keep bond very strong, sometimes meeting at night in the house of one of them. Of the other two, one part to study at university and in practice no longer returns to live in the village. The other moved to the capital and makes a very secluded life. However, the very strong link between them remains and a closeness that never comes without, even if only in a spiritual sense.

A very compelling story, but above all a general reflection on life, moving, engaging, at times even obsessive.

One New Year’s Eve, the seven meet without an apparently valid reason to stay away from families. They reconstruct their whole life up to that moment and talk about their master, Guido, his life, his encounter with them, philosophy and his teaching. They tell about his love for a woman bigger than him and the events that led him to go abroad to teach. That teacher would become a very important and famous character, always with a fund of bitterness because his departure had led him to give up the love of the woman he loved.

The following morning, very early, the seven move towards the cemetery and meet the other two there. One of them brought the urn with him with the ashes of Guido and all together make him the extreme tribute and bring the urn to the small family chapel.

By now everyone is over sixty years old and gradually become aware of themselves.

-Professor, am I wrong or the story of these nine boys is rather a journey to discover the world, but above all in search of God?

Inside this book you will find, at least I hope, the path of knowledge in which the life of every man, philosophy, religion, mysteries consists. Of course, even the search for God and the meaning of life. The meaning of the story, even the smallest narrated. Marcellino who is the protagonist of the novel embodies the archetype of the pilgrim. He lives and goes on with steps not aimed at an ultimate and defined destination, but aimed at understanding everything that revolves around his life. It is a wayfarer of our time, open, without pre -established patterns, a man thirsty for knowledge, explorer of life and what we could call the “divine”. He sees, the idea of ​​possessing a single truth is completely foreign to him. Instead, he senses that knowledge, rather than a possession, is a mosaic to recompose day by day, instant after instant.

-I found suggestive the pages whose she tells the arrival of Marcellino in Rome, and that in front of the majesty of the Basilica of San Pietro wonders if that church can really be considered the palace of the “king of the world” …

I would love that this seems to my book was read as my intimate reflection on the crisis of the sense of the sacred. Observing the grandeur of the Basilica, Marcellino does not perceive a feeling of comfort, internal peace, but on the contrary, he feels a strange emptiness. Sacred architecture wanted to make the glory of the Divine tangible, but nevertheless, in an era in which many struggle to feel God in canonical places, the external wrapping, let’s call it that, risks seeming to be without substance. For Marcellino, however, the sacredness is everywhere the presence of the divine is recognized. It is in people, in cultures, in the perspectives of the world.

-Salvatore, however, another protagonist of the novel, is completely different and far from Marcellino. Why?

Salvatore symbolizes the daily struggle against the heaviness of history, against everything that precedes us and conditions us. Unlike Marcellino, who opens to the discovery, Salvatore is marked by the painful events he has lived, the loss of his companions, the load of faults and responsibilities, but he also in the end aims to a form of redemption. The redemption of which I speak should not be understood as a philosophical or mystical redemption, but as something extremely concrete and complex, made of work, effort, especially dedication. Salvatore works to build, adjust, put back all that is broken, and his body ends up selling under the weight of the subject. Salvatore’s death highlights the unavoidable limit of those who try to tame and control the world with their own strength. At the end of his journey Salvatore finds an inner peace: he understands that the past, with all his load of suffering, does not delete himself, but has been handed down. And in asking that the story of his companions be told to Pietro lies the key to his legacy: no true knowledge is built without keeping the memory alive.

Let’s recap, Marcellino represents the man and Salvatore the world, but there is also Peter in his story …

Pietro is the custodian of the perpetual interrogation.

What does it mean?

In the novel, God does not appear as an exhaustive answer, but as a continuous question that emerges at the end of each path and every wayfarer. When Pietro speaks, he does not offer solutions, but pushes those who hear to warn the mystery of God even more intensely.

When Pietro imagines God, how do you see him?

The God of Peter is not a defined entity, a dogma or an authority that gives orders. It is present in the absence, in the words that put everything in question. Pietro testifies to a divine dimension that does not impose himself with definitive or absolute responses, but which instead opens spaces of reflection and silence. When Franz, on the point of death, finds himself on the border between the worlds, Pietro’s voice does not close the circle, but reopens it, reaffirming the inexhaustibility of the mystery.

But who is actually the Franz you are talking about?

Franz is an enigmatic figure, a sort of “supervisor” which, at the end of his life, faces the decisive moment. Franz is a person who, for a long time, believed he could influence the events without ever exposing himself, acting from behind the scenes. But in the supreme hour, when he compares himself with death, here he realizes that his power was completely illusory.

I found the story of the death that comes to his great suggestion door …

Nothing can replace the encounter with the death that arrives. It is for every man. When death knocks on our door all that has accumulated in life – power, knowledge, influence, prestige – everything is less.

What remains, professor?

Only the nakedness of a man in front of the unknown remains. And the divine voice, if we want to call it that, does not pronounce decrees or consolations. He only poses questions. Precisely in this tension the most authentic passage towards awareness is made.

At a certain point in his story Pietro is the architect of a very singular “miracle”. How should this page read?

In the novel, the miracle is not a striking manifestation of supernatural powers. Rather, it is an act of human love capable of generating redemption and reconciliation. A simple gesture that changes the course of events, alleviating Salvatore’s pain, and offering hope where it seemed to be missing. This dynamic reveals that the authentic transformation of man arises from solidarity, compassion, from the desire to empathize with the other’s wounds. It is not something dropped from above, but it is the result of a meeting of looks and hearts.

Is there also a lot of Jesus in his book?

Jesus is the one who constantly walks alongside Marcellino, without imposing doctrines or sentences. Jesus represents the idea of ​​a divine presence that is close to man, who lives next to him, who follows him, who supports him in times of greater loss. This is not a principle or, worse still, of an idea far from him, but of a real travel companion who reminds Marcellino – and each of us – the opportunity to find the sacred in every stage of our journey.

Can I define your novel a journey into faith?

I can only say that in the novel they coexist tangible aspects of our time, everyday life, work, the effort of living, and a continuous momentum towards the beyond, a questioning, that is, on the foundations of reality that sometimes may appear “a magical fact” . Believe me, I have never voluntarily tried to return to a certain school or literary movement: the truth is that my story has taken shape around the characters of the novel, their questions, and above all to their conflicts.

Can we think of a sort of magical realism?

If the readers were to recognize elements of magical realism, I could also understand it. There is in all that I have written a dimension of the divine that emerges overwhelmingly in everyday life, without great proclamations, as if it were a natural component of our existence. If others, however, preferred to speak of metaphysical realism- someone has also told me- recognizing a more marked philosophical tension, I would willingly also accept this interpretative key. In any case, the fundamental aspect that I would like to be caught by reading these pages is the substantial encounter between the effort of human understanding and the sense of mystery that dotes our life.

In your book, she tells of the formation of nine boys led by a master, Guido Grimaldi, who introduces them to the philosophical method …

The book focuses precisely on the growth of these young people, on their discovery of critical thinking, and on how a master can mark the existential path of those who follow him. Guido Grimaldi is a charismatic figure, a mentor that does not limit himself to transmitting notions, but invites the boys to ask themselves about what gives meaning to life. In that context, the theme of love as a strength that gives fullness to existence. Love not as an episodic feeling, but love as something that pervades and supports the entire human research. This conceptual nucleus then reappears also in “the king of the world”, because the characters, despite being faced with more complex challenges, carry in themselves the imprinting of that initial formation, which has opened them to dialogue, shared memory and to transcendence. Ultimately love acts as a common thread that unites the two works and supports the narrative until its epilogue.

I didn’t ask him before, but I can’t help but do it now, “the king of the world” is somehow his autobiography?

The writer knows well that basically every literary work is always a concrete reflection of the writer, but this is no longer the others. Each author pours into his own characters and in his own pages fragments of himself, his concerns and his hopes. So I did this time too. However, there is no total overlap. If anything, the intent remains to tell a story that transcends the single personal experience, in this case my life and my professional history, and that can speak instead, to some extent, to the rest of the world, to my friends, to whom He knows me and loves me, who was interested in reading it, and that in the end the only certainty that I hope will come out of the pages I wrote, and that is the strength of love for life and for others. Woe not to believe in love and understanding, and in sharing, and in solidarity. What life would it be otherwise? It is in the abysses of pain that sometimes is found what seemed impossible. There is the sense of oneself, the way to the future. That all this is called faith or intellectual intuition depends on our formation, on the context in which we live, on the language used to tell us to others. But it is not important to define it. You only have to live this faith to the end, crossing nothing without fear.

“The king of the world”, 2025, Amazon