About the book: 1959 / "If you have ever had the chance to climb the steep and constantly stinking stairs of a government building in the city of P-e and there, at the very top, turning to the right, to penetrate through a clumsy door with a permanently broken lock into a whole department of low and very dirty rooms that housed the local Order of public charity, then, of course, you caught your eye sitting at the window, in front of an oak desk, an official , well over forty years old, with large features, with disheveled hair and sideburns, broad shoulders, sinewy arms and even more clumsy legs…»