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L’ultima partita a carte
Einaudi, 2002.
(The last game of cards)
The work was created by request of Roberto Cerati, who had listened to a lecture by Rigoni Stern at the Cini Foundation in Venice titled “Rushing the end, anticipating the start: Succisa virescit.” It has the specific intent to reread briefly all his previous literary production on his experience as a young man in World War II, in the light of the time elapsed. Reworking notes and papers, with one look at the history book and one to his memories as an “Alpino,” the author gives us a thick and “painful” book, not just for the memories it evokes, but for the fear of a present that forgets too quickly. Rereading it, “this book has brought me even spite and pain,” Mario wrote in the foreword to the first edition, “and sadness in seeing how things are today on the earth.”