Fabiano Alborghetti, “Il movimento elementare” (The Elementary Movement)

Fabiano Alborghetti
The Elementary Movement
A Novel in Verse

Literary Grant Pro Helvetia 2025

What remains after a man’s life? And how can it be told—especially when it is the life of one’s own father?

In this powerful and searing novel in verse, Fabiano Alborghetti returns to the lives of the vulnerable, weaving a narrative that is both intimate and universal. Drawing on the legacy of Attilio Bertolucci, Elio Pagliarani, and Marco Bellocchio, and moving toward the memoiristic candor of Annie Ernaux, Alborghetti remains faithful to his deeply rooted civic sensibility, navigating a family story that resonates far beyond its personal origins.

Out of the fractures of memory and the wounds of the past, Alborghetti shapes a tragic yet profoundly human portrait of a life marked by imbalance. Stripping away literary artifice, what emerges is a stark inventory of deprivation and the longing for redemption: a catalogue of wrong turns, a failed marriage, harsh hands raised against children “because that’s how you raise them,” and, ultimately, a life begun again when it may already be too late. By deconstructing his father’s life, Alborghetti leads the reader across both personal and collective terrain, revealing a world that has endured change more than it has truly embraced it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fabiano Alborghetti (1970) is a poet and cultural promoter. He writes in Italian and lives in Ticino (Switzerland). His poems have been translated -whether for magazines, anthologies, or in unabridged editions- into more than ten languages.
He is listed as a reference author in the literature section of the Lonely Planet Switzerland guidebook. He is also the first author from Italian-speaking Switzerland to be included in an issue of the scientific journal Scientific American [read more].

Foreign Rights: gabrielecapellieditore@gmail.com