My thanks as well to Anna Stein, Mark Krotov, Marion Duvert, Matteo Falomi, Marcello Pacifico, Stefano Cipolla, Christian Rocca, Tiziana Scalabrin, Michela Iori, Francesca Casalino, la Segheria, Citofonare Interno 7, Matteo De Simone, Cristina Gerosa, Molly Walls, and Elizabeth Harris.

“We are the ambiguous forms.”: This line here is from “Le forme ambigue,” by Edoardo Albinati, translated here by Elizabeth Harris.

“Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning and complaining in it…”: This sentence here is from the essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton.

“And how bewildered is any womb-born creature / that has to fly.”: This line here is from “The Eighth Elegy,” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

In memory of Anna Maria Bertolli Marciani.

Also by Francesco Pacifico

ALSO BY FRANCESCO PACIFICO

Class

The Story of My Purity

A Note About the Author

Francesco Pacifico lives in Rome. He is the author of the novels The Story of My Purity and Class, a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. He is a frequent contributor to La Repubblica and n+1, and his work has also appeared in McSweeney’s, The White Review, and elsewhere. He is a founder and senior editor of the literary magazine Il Tascabile. He has translated the work of a number of writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Dave Eggers, Hanya Yanagihara, Ralph Ellison, Chris Ware, Matt Groening, David Mazzucchelli, and Alison Bechdel. You can sign up for email updates here.

A Note About the Translator

Elizabeth Harris has translated works by Mario Rigoni Stern, Giulio Mozzi, Antonio Tabucchi, Andrea Bajani, and Claudia Durastanti. For her various translations of Tabucchi, she has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, the Italian Prose in Translation Award, and the National Translation Award for prose.

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1. * “Job” here refers to “status,” not economic subsistence.