Noè Albergati, Cemento e vento (Concrete and Wind)

Noè Albergati
Concrete and Wind
Verse Novel

Following a literary tradition more common in Anglophone countries and less so in Italian literature, Concrete and Wind is a novel written as poetry—hypnotic and captivating. It delicately yet intensely explores the truths of love and its abysses; a devastating excavation into the mixture of obsession and loss that forms the dark core of our lives. Each page is an extraordinary and moving testimony that lingers in the heart long after the final line.
By Fabiano Alborghetti

She had everything: a job, a love, friends, ordinary evenings spent over aperitifs, or workdays. An ordinary life that becomes extraordinary when she stops recognizing and accepting herself—when the malaise digs deep within her, relentless, until it turns her days into a void. Depression, an unwilling hospital stay, medication, and escapes. The consequences are friction, silence, unraveling relationships, and pretenses that everything is fine, that life will return to what it once was.

Then comes the day when she jumps from the Verzasca dam, putting an end to her sense of inadequacy and to herself.

The narrator is the one who remains—the stationary traveler, her partner in love but also a witness to her alienation and loss. He bears the burden of fatigue and, at times, tangled anger. His is the voice that redefines the daily routine, the tyranny imposed on both by an illness that is intangible yet undeniable. He is what remains, carrying the weight of testimony and the duty to rebuild.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Noè Albergati, born in Alto Malcantone (1990), earned a doctorate at the University of Pisa in collaboration with the University of Fribourg, focusing on the reception of magic in Este literature from Boiardo to Ariosto. He currently works as a librarian and as coordinator for publications and events at the Federal University for Vocational Education and Training. He also collaborates with DFA and the Pädagogische Hochschule Graubünden in creating educational materials for Italian language instruction. For several years, he has been part of the organizing committee of the Bienne literary and translation festival Incontri. In 2019, he published his first poetry collection, From Sunset to Dawn, with Alla Chiara Fonte. Concrete and Wind is his first verse novel.

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