Born in 1948 in Mantova, Antonio Moresco has been a Catholic seminarian, a militant in Italy’s extra-parliamentary left during the Years of Lead and, finally, a writer. Now considered by many Italian readers (but, it must be said, only by a handful of Italian critics, which significantly hindered his recognition at home and abroad) to be one of the most important living Italian writers, he had a troubled publishing history: “The Beginnings” took more than ten years to find a publisher, before coming out for the first time in 1998.