Sciltian Gastaldi,

author and prof.

"How euphonious this name is!"

“Your name is… WHAT?” This is usually how people react when I introduce myself. So let’s settle this once and for all: “Sciltian” (not Christian, not Cynthia…) is actually my name. My atheist mother even managed to have me baptized with it.
That’s right: my first name is the surname of an Armenian metaphysical painter, Gregorio Sciltian, to whom I am connected only by the fact that we happen to share the same name—or rather, my name and his surname.

The painter Sciltian came to live in Italy after the October Revolution, seeking political asylum. In April 1974, just before I was born, my mother read about an exhibition of the Armenian painter in Venice and said, “What a beautiful-sounding name!” And she promptly saddled me with it.
Ever since then, it has been my very own cross to bear, as Jesus used to say.

My latest book

This is the story of an obsession.

The obsessive love between Francesco and Emanuele: two high school students in the early 1990s.

Chicco and Lele study together, go to the movies, listen to music, and exchange letters and emails. And they love each other. With such intensity that they are like angels with only one wing: they can fly only when embracing one another.

As gay teenagers, they grow up together, discovering the joys and pains of love. Caught between the fear of breaking social conventions and the overwhelming passion of first love, they share a journey of emotional awakening.

While Chicco and Lele are falling in love, the world around them is changing. The backdrop is a turbulent Europe at the end of the century, marked by the aftermath of Italy’s Tangentopoli corruption scandals, the collapse of political ideologies, and the difficult reunification of Germany.

Amid so much change and uncertainty, their families push them toward a more traditional way of life. In this respect, Chicco’s relationship with his father—a conservative lawyer caught up in a bribery scandal that ultimately lands him in prison—offers a powerful portrait of a father-son bond shaped by generational misunderstandings and by another kind of love.

Set between Rome, Berlin, and Bologna, this coming-of-age novel explores themes that resonate with adolescents of every era and every sexual orientation: the ability to love and to love oneself, the courage to make difficult choices, and the respect for one’s own dreams and those of others.

In the bookstores since November 2021

Was Pier Vittorio Tondelli a writer who was “filthily blasphemous,” or was he “inspired by the grace of God”?

Were his works homophobic, symbols of hedonism and frivolity, or rather a pop and camp expression of social engagement and gay counterculture? Why are both leading Catholic cultural publications and prominent figures within the LGBTQ+ movement so fascinated by Tondelli’s life and words?

Sciltian Gastaldi devoted seven years of research to one of the most important Italian authors of the twentieth century—the chronicler of the 1980s, the unconventional son of Bologna’s 1977 movement, and the first Italian novelist to write about AIDS—offering a compelling answer to these questions.

What emerges is a portrait of Tondelli as a writer who not only belongs fully within the political littérature mineure described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, but who also stands as a remarkable champion of camp culture—a tradition rooted in Enlightenment libertinism and dedicated to “giving a voice to those who have no voice”: society’s outcasts, drug users, transgender people, gay couples, and the young.

A cosmopolitan intellectual in the fullest sense, a sharp observer and writer of his time, Tondelli is presented here in the role that suits him best: that of a total writer.

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Guide to Blended Learning and (also) Distance Teaching

In every circumstance, it is essential that school continues. Always.

Those who teach will therefore be required to manage a class not only in the classroom, but also from behind a screen. This book is not aimed at enthusiasts of remote learning, but rather at those teachers who understandably struggle with it.

It is a guide to facing a new, revolutionary way of being a teacher, written by a professor who has been through it—and made it.