Beppe Fenoglio

> It was the wildest parade in modern history: in uniforms alone, there was enough for a hundred carnivals. (...) Alongside the men marched the female partisans, dressed in men’s clothes, and here someone in the crowd began to murmur—Ah, poor Italy!—because these girls had faces and a gait that set all the townspeople winking . The partisans’ conquest of Alba lasted less than a month, and Fenog

The events between 8 September 1943 and February 1945 form the historical backdrop of the novel. These are the years of the partisan war. An officer cadet in Rome, Johnny left the army, like so many others following the announcement of the armistice and the ensuing general chaos. He returned home, to Alba. A young intellectual passionate about English literature, he belongs to a lower-middle-c

The novel is set in 1943, during the dramatic months that led to the fall of Mussolini—replaced by Badoglio—the Armistice of September 8, and the king's flight from Rome. In this brief span of time, Italians came to realize what the Fascist regime had truly been, and into what disaster it had plunged them. Like the novel's protagonist, the officer cadet Johnny, Italians were seized by an indigna

The book is set in the hills of Alba during the Resistance. Milton is a partisan who returns to the house where he used to visit, and secretly love, Fulvia, and learns that she allegedly had a relationship with Giorgio, who has also become a partisan. To uncover the truth, he sets out in search of Giorgio, who has meanwhile been captured by the Fascists and faces execution by firing squad. Milt