Nicolai Lilin is a young novelist born in Transnistria in 1980 who lives in Italy at the present time. His first novel, Educazione siberiana (2009), a kind of transfigured autobiography, has been the subject of lively debate about the supposed « lies » of the writer. However, the transfiguration of the reality is an integral part of literary writing, as Bakhtin says: in this specific case, the author chooses the language of his adopted country, the Italian, in order to introduce the reader to his original community values. Through his literary works, the author defends his land, Siberia, that has been transformed by Soviet Union in a concentration camp and in primary source of raw materials. At the same time, Lilin’s novels are the expression of a crisis of presence (according to De Martino’s theory of ethnology) within a subject who deeply feels the loss of culture; on the other hand, they point out the necessity of protecting the natural world (Siberian taiga as metonymy of the entire Earth) within which every human being must give up his dominant et destructive role.