A Chill in the Air
An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940
Published on 7. August 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-68137-264-8 (ISBN)
Description
"A harrowing account of life in Italy in the year leading up to World War II, available in the US for the first time. War in Italy in 1939 was by no means necessary or even beneficial to the country.But in June 1940, Mussolini finally declared war on Britain and France. The awfulinevitability with which Italy stumbled its way into a war for which they were illprepared and largely unenthusiastic is documented here with grace and clarity byone of the twentieth century's great diarists. This diary, which has never been published and was recently found in Iris Origo'sarchives, is the sad and arresting account of the grim absurdities that Italy and theworld underwent as war became more and more unavoidable. Origo, British-bornand living in Italy, was ideally placed to record the events. Extremely engaged withthe world around her, connected to people from all areas of society (from the peasantson her estate to the US ambassador to Italy), she writes of the turmoil, thedanger, and the bleakness of Italy in 1939 and 1940, as war went from a possibilityto a dreadful reality. A chill in the air covers the beginning of a war whose catastrophic effects are documentedin Origo's bestselling War in Val D'Orcia"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 204 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
216 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68137-264-8 (9781681372648)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Iris Origo (1902-1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. She is the author of Images and Shadows; A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940; Leopardi: A Study in Solitude; and The Merchant of Prato, among others. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a prizewinning historian and novelist. Her nonfiction book The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio was the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London and Suffolk. Katia Lysy was born in Rome. She has worked for Italian television RAI 3, in publishing, as a journalist and as a literary translator from English and French into Italian. She now lives between Rome and Val d'Orcia, in southern Tuscany, where she assists her mother Benedetta, daughter of the writer Iris Origo, in the management and development of the family estate of La Foce, whose historic gardens are visited by Iris Origo readers from all over the world.