Interlinea, 2006.

(That Christmas in the Steppe)

This small anthology on Christmas, divided into two parts, “Natali di guerra” (War Christmas) and “Natali vecchi, natali nuovi” (Old Christmas, New Christmas), gathers “to his friends” some texts written from 1978, the year of the publication of “The story of Tönle,”, until 2000. Closing the book, Rigoni Stern offers a brief autobiography of his.

With these writings, the author seems to tell us: we live a Christmas forgeful of its own values, broken under the rubble of war, then canceled at the urging of a modernity that takes us away from humanity. So the book is at the same time a cue for a great lesson in civility and a starting point to better cope with the present.