"It was for the sake of that memory that I returned to Cavergno...". On returning home, Gori will find nothing of what he had left behind. "Rock Bottom" recounts the failure of a collective illusion: the illusion, nurtured since the 19th century by thousands of Swiss-Italian emigrants, of finding fortune overseas. Through the story of Gori, Plinio Martini offers a glimpse of the harsh life of an Alpine valley, a mixture of bitterness, grief for a lost love and nostalgia for a way of life that also had many redeeming features. First published in 1970, immediately greeted with enthusiasm by critics and readers, "Rock Bottom" is a classic of 20th-century Swiss-Italian literature.