The Day of Judgement

Like Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard, The Day of Judgment is a matchless poetic evocation of change and decay in an era now lost, unfolding the melancholy rhythms of the isolated Sardinian town of Nuoro at the turn of the century through the family fortunes of Don Sebastiano Sanna, its aristocrat and its notary. Through him, now an old man, we see the malarial plain and the olive groves, and the vineyards and orchards laboriously hacked out of the craggy slopes. And through his reflections on the town where he was born we see also Nuoro's other citizens, who come forward into the limelight for a page or two and leave in the mind what seems to be their whole life story. From this insignificant place and these negligible lives Satta created a sombre and tragic pageant, for in Nuoro the sin of having lived is such that the dead are restless, awaiting some day of judgment that will set them free at last from life.