My name is José, I am thirty-one years old, and I am a bookseller in Lisbon. I have a lung disease and want to change the world. With these words, the protagonist José Fontana introduces himself in the latest novel by Alberto Nessi. He recounts his childhood in Ticino, his time as a watchmaker apprentice in Le Locle, and his emigration to Lisbon, where he encountered socialism in Portugal and discovered the historic bookstore Bertrand. Once again, the Ticinese writer Alberto Nessi succeeds in making a historical figure the protagonist of his novel and telling his story with the humanity that is characteristic of him. The emigration from poverty in the Ticino valley is just as much a theme as the worlds that open up to José in the second half of the 19th century.