Coffee is not only a liquid, but also a means to make friends. This is how the book “Il caffè sospeso” (Suspended coffee), a collection of thoughts and anecdotes by Neapolitan writer Luciano De Crescenzo, starts. Master of the art to mix pieces of everyday life with noble thoughts, the author will reveal philosophy even in places you never thought it could be. “When a Neapolitan is happy for whatever reason, he pays two cups of coffee; instead of just the one he’s going to drink, he pays for himself and for the customer coming after. It’s like offering a coffee to the rest of the world…” A suspended coffee is a Neapolitan custom, but also a philosophy of life. This book collects the best of the articles written by the writer and journalist, issued on newspapers and magazines from 1977 to 2007 and never published in bookshops. Greek philosophy employed to everyday life, anecdotes full of uncommon sense, Italy passed through an irony lens: piece after piece, the book forms a perfect summa of Luciano De Crescenzo’s thinking.

And while imaginary and imaginative conversations between Empedocles, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein make us giddy, it happens that one wonders about calendars – from the one of Gregory XIII to the one of Sabrina Ferilli -, about Big Brother according to Aunt Carmela’s perspective, about homosexuality from Socrates to Storace. Suspended coffee is a rich and tasty book, a heap of sparks to laugh and think. Everything always flavoured with irony, like a right amount of sugar to be put in coffee, so to make it even more enjoyable.

Born in Naples on August 20th, 1928, Luciano De Crescenzo is a writer, director, actor and presenter. Before dedicating his time to fiction, essay writing and the show business, he practised engineering. He has always placed the activity as populariser parallel to the one of writer, able to introduce even the most inexperienced reader to the problems raised by antique philosophy.