A native of Sardinia, Grazia Deledda's novels are mostly set in the rugged hills around her home town of Nuoro. Her characters reflect the difficult lives of people still constrained by ancient customs and practices. Her voice is powerful, her tone often sombre. But her wide-ranging talent had a sunnier side, revealed in many of her later works. The Christmas Present, first published in 1930, brings together a collection of folk tales, children's stories and personal reminiscences that portray with humour and affection the lighter side of Sardinian life. This is a book that will charm and delight, opening a window on to the Sardinia of old and the formative influences on a Nobel laureate. AUTHOR: Grazia Deledda was born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardinia. The street has been renamed after her, via Grazia Deledda. She finished her formal education at 11. She published her first short story when she was 16 and her first novel, Stella D'Oriente in 1890 in a Sardinian newspaper when she was 19. Leaves Nuoro for the first time in 1899 and settles in Cagliari, the principal city of Sardinia where she meets the civil servant Palmiro Madesani who she marries in 1900 and they move to Rome. Grazia Deledda writes her best work between 1903-1920 and establishes an international reputation as a novelist. Nearly all of her work in this period is set in Sardinia. Publishes Elias Portolu in 1903. La Madre is published in 1920. She wins the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 and received it in a ceremony the following year. She dies in 1936 and is buried in the church of Madonna della Solitudine in Nuoro, near to where she was born.