UPHILL

IN 2015 I MET LUCIANO VINELLA, an entrepreneur from Putignano, the town where I was born: an ancient community on the Bari Murgia, nestled among limestone, olive groves, and vineyards, guardian of age-old traditions and home to the oldest Carnival in Europe¹.
A friend asked whether I would like to meet a genius. I accepted out of courtesy, though not without prejudice: true genius and true idiocy are both fairly rare, I reminded myself as I walked into the Hungaria café in Rome one evening. My first impression confirmed my skepticism. Nothing in his ordinary appearance or manner suggested any exceptional heights. By the grace of God, I did not stop watching him closely, because I was spectacularly wrong.
The conversation between Luciano and my friend, a brilliant attorney, revealed the remarkable man within him. Luciano constantly anticipated the lawyer's thoughts and arguments; despite his evident lack of formal education, he was perfectly at ease in their verbal duel.
His warmth, simplicity, and even his peremptory manner, interspersed with flashes of unexpected hardness, were all facets of his captivating conversation. He spoke, moreover, with the broad and colorful accent of the province of Bari, the kind I had not heard since the 1960s, when I spent my holidays in the trulli of Aunt Maria and Uncle Ciccio in Putignano.
Luciano is an extraordinary man, with roots sunk deep in the most provincial corner of Puglia and, at the same time, a spirit reaching out toward the world, without borders, no matter how distant. The purpose of this book is to tell how, and by doing what, Luciano Vinella refused to be imprisoned by his hometown, even as he loved it deeply and it rejected him cruelly.
I wanted to give a voice to a man who does not wear his watch over his shirt cuff, who does not affect the softened r of the upper classes, and who does not possess a trace of snobbery; a man who speaks to a chauffeur exactly as I have heard him speak to a cabinet minister; who loves brass-band music; who is sincerely and painfully religious; who weaves no political intrigues; who lives for his work as an entrepreneur and for his family. He is like the glass he produces: transparent, clean, made to serve many purposes. Yet he is not fragile. On the contrary, when broken, he can be hard and cutting.
Thank you for your attention.