A great modern myth, recounting the life of Giovanni Succi, who transformed fasting into a mystic act. — Emanuele Trevi

How much are we willing to renounce and remove from our lives to gain knowledge and be actually satisfied, in tune with the world and our inner selves?

Nowadays, in an era characterized by excess and overindulgence, fasting looks like a revolutionary act.

In the 19th century, it was a form of entertainment, but there was a man who even at that time saw in fasting, for its intersection of the physical and the metaphysical, a uniquely potent, subversive, paradoxical and yet incredibly effective practice to reach strength, happiness, and peace.

That man was Giovanni Succi, known in the 19th century as the greatest professional faster of all time. Born in 1850 in a small coastal town of Emilia Romagna, notoriously a land of great eaters, he discovered the secret of fasting in Africa and put it in the service of humanity, convinced that by giving up on what materially weighs on us, we could be truly “full” in the body and in the mind, but especially in the spirit.

Enzo Fileno Carabba takes the unconventional and almost unbelievable life of Giovanni Succi and delivers the enlightening portrait of a pre-modern man, scattered with extremely current reflections on abundance and scarcity, on fasting as an invitation to awareness, and life as a form of art. But above all, what emerges is the lively, riveting, and beautifully written story of an “acrobat of happiness,” a hero of dreams, of the impossible and the extraordinary.