Pierfrancesco is a factory worker. His life is ordinary. Predictable. Safe.
Then the dream comes.
It comes once, then again, then again - always the same, always at night, always leaving him sitting upright in the dark with a pen in his hand.
He writes formulas he has never studied. Calculations he cannot explain. Drawings that take the shape of a violin.
Equations for the propagation of sound through air.
He has never built anything in his life.
Now he knows he must build ten violins.
He doesn't know why ten. The number arrives with the dream, without explanation - a certainty with no origin, a destination with no map.
He will learn the reason by losing himself first.
Because ten are the Buddhist worlds every human being must cross to fulfill their destiny: from Hell to Enlightenment, through Anger, Greed, Ecstasy, Seeking, Tranquility.
Each violin will be a world. Each world will cost him something.
By the time the last instrument is finished, he will no longer be the man who started.
A novel about the things that choose us before we choose them - about craft as a spiritual path, about dreams that do not explain themselves, about the stubborn, quiet courage of ordinary people called to do extraordinary things.
When the circle closes, Pierfrancesco will finally understand why it had to be him. Why ten. Why now.