In 1354 the inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich and King Peter IV of Aragon landed with the Spanish troops on the "semi-wild" island to besiege Alghero , worried about the revolt led by the judge Mariano d'Arborea, who has as an ally a mysterious divinity called " Sardus Pater ".
This is the synopsis of part of the novel "The mystery of the inquisitor Eymerich" (1996, Urania) one of the best known (and translated in Europe) of the saga that Valerio Evangelisti, who died yesterday in Bologna at the age of 69, built around to the real figure of the ruthless Dominican inquisitor of the Crown of Aragon.
Novel where the past influences the present and the future, given that the story is divided into three temporal planes. One, in fact, concerns the king's expedition with twelve thousand men to reoccupy Alghero and subdue Judge Mariano. An expedition that did not achieve the desired results, so much so that after more than seven months a truce was reached and the peace outlined in 1355 in Sanluri , which lasted about ten years. The historical fact is fictionalized and adapted to the style and narration of Eymerich's events: science fiction with a splash of gothic and horror that made the Bolognese writer famous, who died on Easter Monday, two months before he turned 70.
From Nicholas Eymerich to the Nostradamus trilogy, passing through the cycle of the Mexican sorcerer-gunslinger Pantera and the American trilogy focused on the trade union movement, Valerio Evangelisti has created a very personal style, contaminating the forms of genre literature. An original and unique author on the Italian scene.