The Foundation recommends

Father Christmas Executed

In December 1951, an effigy of Father Christmas was hanged and set alight in front of Dijon Cathedral. These were the years of post-war France, a period steeped in the consumer culture that was sweeping in from the United States, and both the Protestant and Catholic churches were quick to protest against what they saw as the growing paganisation of Christmas. Claude Lévi-Strauss, the anthropologist and founder of Structuralism, decided to write a short essay on the figure of Father Christmas, taking this incident as his cue. Wry and perceptive, the article appeared in the politically engaged journal Les temps modernes and explores the deep cultural layers of the festivity and of this figure whom the anthropologist classifies not as a myth or a legend, but as an authentic divinity  –  with the curious distinction that, unlike all others, only children believe in him. Father Christmas’s cultural function has thus become that of separating yet binding together two social groups, acting as a liminal figure who marks the rite of passage from one to the other. Adults, who don the beard, red suit and sack, perform this ritual role, becoming overseers of childhood (one need only think of how children are disciplined through the promise of gifts for good behaviour) and ensuring their passage into adulthood and thus into society, through the initiation that comes when the truth is revealed. This kind of ritual function is not unique to Father Christmas, for it appears in comparable rites across the world, such as the spirits of the dead, the Kachina, in the traditions of the Pueblo peoples of the south-western United States. Ultimately, the pyre staged by the French clergy became a kind of auto-da-fé, in which the object of iconoclasm was not destroyed but transfigured, restoring Father Christmas to his ritual function and proving his enduring power.

Babbo Natale giustiziato
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Sellerio, 2024

Breaktime Is Over

Marcello Gori, a thirty-year-old from Viareggio, is stranded in a state of existential drift, trapped in a kind of endless late adolescence from which he simply cannot break free. After spending the better part of a decade at university, he now hops from one precarious job to another, forever putting off life’s real decisions — including his relationship with Lucrezia, which he keeps sabotaging for fear of stepping into adulthood. While he treads water in this suspended state, something quite unforeseen happens: against all expectations, Marcello wins a doctoral scholarship at the University of Pisa under Professor Sacrosanti, a towering figure of Italian literature and a formidable academic baron. Marcello dreams of drafting a grand, sweeping thesis — one that explores Borges and Unamuno as readers of Don Quixote, or that binds together Gadda, Bolaño and Foster Wallace — but the professor advises him instead to devote himself to a minor Italian writer, Tito Sella, a former terrorist and once-promising author in the early 1980s. As Marcello plunges into his research, Tito gradually becomes a kind of alter ego, and the novel unfolds through the twin narratives of their lives, two worlds that cast a sharp light on Italy’s recent history. Dario Ferrari portrays both the years of terrorism in the country and the contemporary academic sphere with dry, biting humour, sometimes veering into the grotesque, and often coaxing a smile from the reader. Drawing on examples such as Borges and Cervantes, Ferrari also explores the metanarrative with the introduction of Sella’s supposed autobiography Fantasima, a novel within the novel. This is a lost work of doubtful existence that Marcello attempts to piece together from documents preserved in the author’s archives in Paris, retracing his life and the political struggle of the Ravachol brigade of which he was a member.

La ricreazione è finita
Dario Ferrari
Sellerio, 2023

Death at the Crossroads

The Edo period in Japan remains one of the most fascinating and mysterious eras in the nation’s history. A new Shogun has reunited the country, while the defeated samurai, now without masters, roam the land as ronin. One of these is Matsuyama Kaze — his name meaning “the wind of the pine woods” — a warrior without a homeland yet steadfast in his loyalty to his late lord. Bound by honour, Kaze sets out on a quest to fulfil a final promise to his lord’s wife: to find her missing daughter. His journey soon leads him to a puzzling crime — a man found dead at the crossroads of four roads. The murder is hastily pinned on the coalman who discovered the body, but Kaze’s keen eye instantly detects a whole series of contradictions. This novel is the first in a tetralogy that carefully weaves together various elements of detective fiction, historical narrative, comedy and swashbuckling Japanese adventure stories. Written for a Western audience fascinated by the land of the Rising Sun, Furutani’s works provide richly detailed historical and social reconstructions of the period, also with insights into its cuisine and everyday customs. Each chapter opens with a haiku, drawing the reader into the poetry that infuses every gesture and every story of this extraordinary world. <br> <br>   Agguato all'incrocio <br> Dale Furutani <br> William Morrow, 1988 <br>

The Queue at the Post Office

After "Chi dice e chi tace", Chiara Valerio takes us back to Scauri, on the border between Lazio and Campania. Lingering echoes of Vittoria still haunt this place, three years after her mysterious disappearance. Here, on the beaches where clams have lately begun to vanish mysteriously, we meet a lawyer, Lea Russo. On the very day she turns forty-three, Lea finds herself having to deal with a new and apparently straightforward murder case. A young girl, Agata Palmieri, has been found dead, and everyone is convinced that her mother, Giovanna, is guilty. As in her previous novel, the plot of this crime drama serves merely as a pretext. Once again, this is an existential exploration that delves into her characters’ inner worlds, exploring the intricate themes that surface through the story. It reflects on motherhood and care, but also on the weight one bears when devotion to another person becomes absolute and so consuming that one’s own sense of self begins to fade away. The quest for truth is, therefore, also a search for identity – particularly that of the women who appear in this story: mothers, nuns, daughters, the accused, and the investigators – each constrained by the tight social fabric of a small provincial town, yet always striving to break out of it. True to the tradition of Italian provincial detective stories, the town itself becomes a microcosm that reflects broader social complexities, and the queue at the post office turns into a scene of generational and social confrontation, where gossip and unspoken truths rise gently to the surface.

La fila alle poste
Chiara Valerio
Sellerio, 2025