This is the story of an “athlete of the soul.” A thinker who challenged every cliché, to give posterity the chance to always put life and the order of things back into play.

Always love, forever. Fight for justice with all the love there is. Of Two, One. Earth and Sky. There is nothing else to do.

It is a summer morning in 415 BC, and four boys are perched on a rock jutting out over the port of Piraeus. The song of the cicadas drowns out the buzz of the crowd. There is a festive atmosphere, but war is looming, and the four boys are silent, absorbed in thought. Among them is a 12-year-old boy with a feverish look in his eyes. His name is Aristocles and, five years later, because of his broad shoulders, he will take a name destined for eternity: Plato. Next to him, on that decisive morning, is the man who tells his story. This story. A love story. What you hold in your hands is a novel of truth. A novel that retraces the life of the greatest philosopher of all time for the first time. A shy and quick-tempered child at first. Suffering from the premature death of his father, dominated by an omnipresent mother, and cared for by a sister who accompanies him into the world without showing it, the boy scrutinizes the events of his time with omnivorous eyes and watches in astonishment as Athens is defeated by Sparta. His uncles invite him to participate in a bloody political operation, but he resists. He has met Socrates, in fact, the strangest man in Athens, and with him he devotes himself to philosophy. 

However, philosophy is not enough, and Socrates is sentenced to death. Plato then leaves for Cyrene and Egypt to find his way. It will be a path that is both straight and winding. What marks it, however, is eros, sensual love experienced with lascivious boys and brilliant men, and all-consuming love, sublime passion, the most powerful driving force of the human soul. With his unmistakable style, Matteo Nucci gives us a timeless novel, the result of years of study and healthy obsession, with which he manages to take us beyond the shadow line of literature once again, making our experience as readers an epic, erotic, enlightening chapter of life. We discover in Plato a man always struggling to achieve justice and happiness, an “athlete of the soul.” Following his pains, failures, and loves, at the end of this overwhelming read, we will find ourselves changed: profoundly transformed by a philosophical writer capable of challenging every cliché in order to give us the chance to constantly rethink the way we live the time we are given.