Ophiouchos

Ophiouchos is the pen name of an Italian author and inventor who lives in Ercolano, ancient Herculaneum, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. The name comes from the constellation of the Serpent Bearer, the thirteenth figure the zodiac forgot.

He has spent his life traveling: the temple towns of India, from Sringeri to Dwarka and up to the source of the Ganges at Gaumukh; Shibam and Sana'a in Yemen; Easter Island, Patagonia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. From those journeys he kept diaries, ink drawings, and photographs, which lay in drawers for decades.

In his eighties, he opened them again. A real dialogue with an artificial intelligence became ILLA – The Shepherd and the Algorithm, a conversation on Dreams and Time that moves between Leopardi, Borges, and Vedantic thought. The rediscovered notebook of his stay in India became In the Temple of Sharada at Sringeri.

The same curiosity made him an inventor. He holds two Italian patents: one for a human-powered boat, which sailed the waters of Baia near Naples, and one for a sub-elliptical pedaling mechanism for bicycles. For him, traveling, thinking, and inventing have always been the same gesture.

His books are published in five languages: Italian, English, French, German, and Spanish.