To each his own job

06 June 2026

by Sara Costantini In the wake of a narrative tradition that intertwines spiritual introspection and analysis of the contemporary condition, Salvation Exercises (Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 2026, 366 pages, 20 euros) by Sebastiano Nata presents itself as a work that cannot easily be reduced to a single genre. It is both an interior training novel, a fragmented diary and a meditation on the relationship between faith, desire and social responsibility. From the first pages, the reader is led into the consciousness of the protagonist, Gabriele, a writer struggling with the drafting of his book Ferrhotel, defined by the agent Lidia with an adjective that marks his creative crisis: “leggerino”. It is precisely this term, apparently marginal, that produces a decisive gap in his perception of …