From The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (translated by Shaun Whiteside):
He was dressed anonymously and had the posture of someone who doesn’t know how to occupy the space of his own body. The professor thought he was another of those who do well in their studies because they are unable to make much headway in life. The ones who, as soon as they find themselves outside the well-trodden paths of the university, always reveal themselves to be fit for nothing.
He looked at the scroll that he held rolled up in his hand, on which it was written in beautiful cursive script that Mattia Balossino was a graduate, a professional, an adult, that it was time for Mr Balossino, B.Sc., to face up to life, and that this meant he had reached the end of the track that he had blindly followed from the first year of primary school to his degree. He was still only half breathing, as if the air didn’t have enough momentum to accomplish the complete cycle.
What now? He wondered out loud.
