Christmas at the four corners of the earth

the long version

The 12 trans-realist prose sketches in Christmas At The Four Corners of The Earth take the reader to Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Rotterdam, China, New Mexico, New Zealand, the Ardennes Forest, and the south Atlantic ocean. We meet a one-armed man playing the piano in a small bungalow under the Southern Cross, a Countess who survives the sinking of a transatlantic steamer and artists who drink and sing through Christmas eve and day. These sketches - working together - are antitheses to traditional and perhaps sentimental Christmas stories. These are not tales of the star, the shepherds and the manger, but of common people confronted by all the beauty, terror, doubt and confusion of the 20th century. What remains? Cendrars's profound vision and a steadfast belief that the incarnation of the spirit does, indeed, endure.