War in Val d'Orcia
Description
<strong>The bestselling diaries of WWII in Tuscany, with a new introduction by writer and social historian Virginia Nicholson, and stunning rediscovered photographs</strong
At the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian - kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's compellingly powerful diary, <em>War in Val d'Orcia</em>, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground.
At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters and refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and compassion, and the devastation that war can bring.
Reviews / Votes
A remarkably moving document that, like the best of the elemental war stories, eventually becomes a statement about the unplanned nature and folly of war * New York Times * A compelling story of heroism [and] compassion * Washington Post * A remarkable war diary * Telegraph * It is jolting to recall, through Origo's sober and self-effacing prose, the atrocious conditions of the summer of 1944 * Financial Times * In her biographies she was able to write precisely on the cusp between the two cultures, turning her work into a bridge of interpretation and understanding -- Tessa Hadley * London Review of Books * Relates in vivid detail the experiences of civilians who had the terrible misfortune to find themselves pinned between battling armies... beyond doubt a minor masterpiece * Washington Post * A welcome rediscovery - evoking a unique, strange moment in civilian/soldier wartime-history with spare, vital immediacy * Kirkus Reviews * A masterpiece of reportage about the simultaneous world war and civil war that ravaged Italy 70 years ago * New York Times * Superb -- Jonathan Yardley * Washington Post * This is a book with the beauty of a Corot painting of a peasant girl; in it catastrophe often throws a heavenly light upon the human * Spectator * Origo was a remarkable writer, with a clear, engaging style, a mind steeped in history and scholarship, but alive always to the nuances and subtleties of human relationships. The hope is that [Pushkin's republication of her work] bring her a new generation of readers * TLS * Full of evocative description, hair-raising anecdotes, and beautifully rendered portraits of courage * New Yorker *More details
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