108 metres is a Shakespearian actor who recites Hamlet with a sweaty trainer in his hand instead of Yorick’s skull. It’s the contrast between the penniless and the stinking rich, between the flashy top floors and the gloomy basements. I lived in the basements…

Once upon a time there was my black job in an Italian pizzeria in Bristol. The flour. The heat. Work your guts out. The bitterness of not having learned any English after three months confined in front of the oven; just the words in the menu and the Spanglish spoken by Silver. When I used to work in the U.K. I had no rights. I could only use words like clean, sweep, yes sir, of course I do. I couldn’t tell the story. I could only understand verbs in the imperative mood as they were used by the supervisor. In the background, Brexit and the impoverished working class that seeks its own pride. Among fights, beers and football, and characters of old novels reborn in the kitchens of the Channel, unfolds the narrative of this story, all while the ghost of Baroness Thatcher haunts the protagonist. And when he returns to an Italy, the steel mills of Piombino and the 108 meters rails, all that remained there, like rusty towers, challenging the clear sky of Tuscany.