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The old gentleman Cornelius, member of the secret sect of the Gryphon, is linked by a strong friendship with the poor child Edvige. When Cornelius dies in 1888, he trusts his wealth and his greatest dream with her: he wishes to reincarnate, body and soul, according to the Gryphon creed, and share a new life with his only love, whom he couldn’t marry. Edvige, conserving samples of the lovers’ biological material, will dedicate her own life to fulfil her old benefactor’s wish.
At the head of an economic empire, the self-made woman Edvige finances researches to make human cloning happen. She collaborates with anyone who is able to help her: Gryphon adherents, wealthy entrepreneurs like her, Fascist and Nazi scientists, with their own interest in the project, prepared to succeed at the cost of many lives.
Nevertheless, when it’s time to use the biological samples, in the 60s, Edvige provides her own cells together with those of Cornelius: she wants to give a second chance to herself, having loved only once, and only Cornelius. When she dies, though, Cornelius’ dream seems to have died with her.
Twenty years later, the young historian Luca, nephew of Edvige, is guided by a mysterious instinct to reconstruct surprising events on the basis of minimal hints: the research group had moved to Buenos Aires and there the clonation project was actually achieved, but the scientists were killed by the Argentine secret service. Valeria, the daughter of one of them, escaped to Italy, where Luca met her.
Their perilous destiny will take place, and the ancient promise between the old man and the child, that cost so many lives, will come true in a totally unexpected way and time.

N.A.

Paolo Cherubini, professor of Psychology at the University of Milan-Bicocca, works on the mechanisms of human thought. He is the author of many peer-review papers, and of a few non-fiction books, among which Pshychology of Thought (Raffaello Cortina Editore) and Reasoning: Psychology and Logic (Giunti).