“1432. Il veneziano che scoprì il bacalà by Paolo Cozzi, recounts the adventures of Pietro Querini, a Venetian gentleman and merchant, who sailed from Candia (Crete) to Flanders in 1431.
The vassel, the Gemma Quirina, loaded with wine and spices and with sixty-eight sailors on board, never reached its destination, instead ending up adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of winter. Eleven people were saved from the Shipwreck and, redeemed, were welcomed to the paradisiacal island of Røst in the Norwegian archipelago, north of the Arctic Circle. Here, in the polar cold, Pietro Quirini will discover the white goldfish i.e., the famous codfish, which, after a difficult and long return journey, he will promptly import first to Venice.
It will be a discovery that will influence and radically change the customs and habits of the time, and even the way of sailing, rendering its discoverer fame and gratitude. Acknowledgment that has come down to the present day, which identifies a region, Veneto, with one of its dishes, baccalà, precisely.
This incredible story is presented here in an adventurous comic novel full of twists and turns, in which we relive, through the characters, the exciting and overwhelming epic of travel and exploration of a time long past.
Further enriching the contents of this edition are three ‘goodies’: a preface by Count Paolo Francis Quirini.”
