May 31st, 1972

Three men.
Three cities.
One name: Franco Ferrante.
Born on the same day, far from one another, and raised in worlds that could not be more different, the three Francos lead lives that run parallel like rails destined never to meet.
Or perhaps they will.
One struggles against a past that taught him mistrust and survival.
Another loses himself in the seduction of appearances and a hunger for recognition.
The third hides in logic, hoping to avoid the traps of the heart.

They are men who have never met, yet they mirror three opposite ways of being in the world: fear, illusion, and the search for meaning.
And as their lives unknowingly brush against each other, a single question emerges: how much of our life is shaped by choice, and how much by pure chance?
From the grit of working-class Turin to the gilded excesses of Treviso, from the quiet streets of Pisa to a Greek island where anything seems possible, the novel digs into the hidden trajectories that could bind distant men together.
And it reveals-through passion, loss, and unexpected coincidences-that it takes only the smallest shift, a missed word, a one-second delay, a glance crossed by accident, for one life to become another.
A story that explores the mystery of identity, the weight of destiny, and the infinite versions of ourselves we might have become.
And it leaves open the most haunting and fascinating question of all:
If we had been born elsewhere, who would we be?