Good evening, Dr Caprotti,
I have just finished reading your book *Le Ossa dei Caprotti* with a voracity I haven’t felt in a long time, and I hope you won’t mind me sharing these thoughts.
First of all, I wanted to thank you for shedding light on so many personal aspects of your family in such a sincere way – something that is by no means a given. Despite internal discontent and disagreements, even today there is often a tendency to present an unblemished and idyllic image of the family to those outside the family circle; Thank you also for the way you have structured the book – sincerely and meticulously – particularly by always substantiating your assertions; your general approach reflects your background in the humanities, whilst at the same time revealing your years of corporate experience – which could certainly earn you an honorary degree in management engineering or in marketing and economics.
Secondly, I wanted to tell you that you immediately aroused a strong sense of empathy in me, because, with all due proportion (on my part, we are not talking about prominent Italian families like yours but about small-scale provincial businesses), my family too has experienced two corporate splits, the first between my grandfather and his brother, and the second between my father and my uncle; and I too, again keeping things in perspective (for me it’s a second job rather than my main business), assist my father in running his small, or rather, very small business, and I have found myself in situations where there have been disagreements and misunderstandings; Now, incidentally, we find ourselves at a time when we will probably be forced to close a business that has reached its fourth generation with me, and I have had no difficulty imagining your state of mind and your thoughts when you were first ousted and then forced to give up the family business (for the sake of completeness, I should mention that my father retained a ‘weak’ branch of the business, whilst the more profitable part remained with my uncle and my cousins; so, in business terms, he is more akin to your uncles than to your father).
I’ll conclude by hoping that this experience of yours – which has already inspired a book – may be fully processed and evolve into a source of learning for your children and those close to you, just as I try to do with the experiences that have shaped me to this day.
I very much hope to have children of my own one day, to have the opportunity to be their guiding force, and that they may resemble you in their knowledge, way of thinking and way of being; I shall cherish the poem that gave me the opportunity to get to know you for the rest of my life.
Fabio Rossi, 23/7/24
