Draft:Alberto Prunetti

Alberto Prunetti in 2023

Alberto Prunetti (born 1973 in Piombino) is an Italian writer and translator, considered one of the leading figures of working-class literature in Italy.

Biography

Raised in Tuscany in a working-class family (his father was an industrial welder and his mother a housewife), Prunetti spent a decade working in the food industry as a kitchen assistant and pizza-chef, including periods abroad, before dedicating himself full-time to writing and publishing, working both as a translator and an editor.

In 2012, Prunetti published the novel Amianto: Una storia operaia [Asbestos: A Working-Class Story] through the publishing house Agenzia X. Centered on the life of his father — a welder who died from an occupational cancer caused by asbestos exposure — the book was initially rejected by several Italian publishers. It subsequently became a major literary case and was reprinted by Alegre in 2014 and by Feltrinelli in 2023. The work inspired several theatrical adaptations and, in 2020, was included in the "Quality Ranking" of the magazine L'Indiscreto as one of the hundred most influential Italian narrative works of the first twenty years of the new millennium.

In 2018, he published 108 metri: The new working class hero, a novel recounting his experiences working as a cleaner in the restrooms of a shopping center in Bristol. The work was translated into English in 2021 under the title Down and Out in England and Italy, receiving positive reviews in the international press — including The Times Literary Supplement and Jacobin — while drawing a harsh pan from the conservative newspaper Daily Mail, which described the author as “a very sweary, grizzled old Italian Lefty.”

Along with his subsequent novel, Nel girone dei bestemmiatori (2020), these works complete what has been termed the "Working Class Trilogy." Following this narrative output, he published the literary criticism essay Non è un pranzo di gala. Inchiesta sulla letteratura working class (2022), analyzing working-class literature across Europe and Italy.

In 2024, Feltrinelli published his novel Troncamacchioni. The following year, in 2025, the book was selected as one of the five finalists for the Premio Campiello, one of Italy's two most prestigious literary awards, earning the author the Premio Selezione Campiello.

His works have been translated or are in the process of being translated into French, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Swedish, and English.

Editorial and cultural activity

Since 2018, Prunetti has directed the Working Class series for Edizioni Alegre, an editorial line dedicated exclusively to fiction by writers from working-class backgrounds. Under his direction, the series has published approximately twenty titles, alternating between Italian authors and translations of international writers (including D. Hunter, Anthony Cartwright, Cash Carraway, and the Spanish author Luisa Carnés, all translated by Prunetti). The series' publications also include the factory diary of the ex-GKN Factory Collective of Campi Bisenzio, leaders of the longest-running labor mobilization in recent Italian history.

Based on an idea by Prunetti and developed in collaboration with the ex-GKN Factory Collective, Edizioni Alegre, and the Arci and Soms cultural associations, he co-founded the Working Class Literature Festival in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, serving as its artistic director since 2023. Hosted directly outside the factory at the heart of the workers' mobilization, the event has established itself as one of the largest festivals of its kind in Europe by attendance.

Works

Novels

• Amianto. Una storia operaia, Milan: Agenzia X, 2012; Rome: Alegre, 2014; Milan: Feltrinelli, 2023.

• 108 metri. The new working class hero, Rome: Alegre, 2018.

• English edition: Down and Out in England and Italy, translated by Elena Pala, London-Melbourne: Scribe, 2021.

• Nel girone dei bestemmiatori, Rome: Alegre, 2020.

• Troncamacchioni, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2024.

Essays

• Non è un pranzo di gala. Inchiesta sulla letteratura working class, Rome: Minimum Fax, 2022.

Bibliography

• M. Jansen, "Claudia Durastanti’s and Alberto Prunetti’s Mobilities across the Mediterranean: The Cultural Labor of (Post-)Working-Class literature", in V. Petsa & E. Sifaki (eds.), Λογοτεχνικές αφηγήσεις (περί) της εργατικής τάξης στη Μεσόγειο / Mediterranean Working-Class Literatures, The University Press of Thessaly, 2025, pp. 83-94.

• Beatrice Mazzi, "Becoming a Witness: Impegno and Testimony in Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture", Columbia University, 2023 (doi:10.7916/ambv-sv36).

• Federico Picerni, "My Story of Us: A Comparative Analysis of Alberto Prunetti and Fan Yusu’s Working-Class Life Writing", in Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Vol. 44, No. 4, Winter 2021, pp. 128-137.

External links

• Cinzia Greco, [English review of Amianto], on Somatosphere, 23 February 2015, in https://somatosphere.com/2015/alberto-prunettis-amianto-una-storia-operaia.html/

• Alberto Prunetti, [Workers Telling Their Own Stories Can Rebuild Working-Class Pride], on Jacobin, 29 January 2022. in https://jacobin.com/2022/01/didier-eribon-retour-a-reims-movie-class

• [Review of Down and Out in England and Italy], on Jacobin, December 2021. https://jacobin.com/2021/12/alberto-prunetti-down-and-out-in-england-and-italy-book-review

• Gigliola Sulis, [From Euro-loser to bard. A fictionalized memoir's appeal to global solidarity] (Review of Down and Out in England and Italy), on The Times Literary Supplement, 29 April 2022. https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/in-brief/down-and-out-in-england-and-italy-alberto-prunetti-review-gigliola-sulis

• [Review and critical excerpt], on Daily Mail, 30 December 2021. in https://www.dailymail.com/home/event/article-10352737/Led-Zeppelin-review-really-need-retelling-Lep-Zeppelins-tawdry-excesses.html