Il ritorno del figlio prodigo looks back to a sequence in the previous work which had been adapted from Elio Vittorinis «The Women of Messine», published in 1949. Spine, a boy from an Italian peasant community, returns from the town where he had gone to sell a donkey. The following piece, Umiliati, is narratively independent of the first, but complements it thematically by continuing the exploration of Vittorinis text in even greater depth. The peasant community is confronted with three hunters who lay claim on the land. They are «the unruffled impassivity of power, sitting in the undergrowth.» (Jean Michel Frodon)