Volponi’s first novel, originally published in 1962, progresses along a double track: on one side the development of a medical case, on the other the experience of a worker in a ‘neo—capitalist’ factory. Albino Saluggia recounts how he gets a job in the factory at the end of the war after living through the experiences of emigration, serving in the army and finally prison. His strong desire for a new, different kind of life makes him enthusiastic about his job notwithstanding the tuberculosis that is undermining his body and his psychological frailty. For him the factory becomes his central existential in-vestment but it becomes an object of frustration as he discovers the inhumanity that underpins it. His sense of disappointment exacerbates his old psychological problems and the more the factory’s welfare system tries to help him the more paranoid he becomes. As his state worsens the factory continues to look after him, keeping his job for him and accepting all his excesses up to the point where he commits the one act that can’t be accepted by the management’s logic — he goes on strike. That marks the end of everything and he gets the sack.

Replying to reviewers, the author said in an interview in 1962:

‘The Memorandum...doesn’t have any literary or ideological programme; it simply examines in a relentless, doggedly scientific way the reality of its main character, just because that is a partial, individual reality. The strength of its analyses aren’t just polemical but necessary and positive . and the work’s scientific nature allows it to come to general conclusions.’