Novel
L'ombra delle colline
Not translated into English
Giovanni Arpino · 1964
Synopsis
Stefano Illuminati, in his thirties, leaves Rome for Piedmont with a woman he has loved, hoping to put order back into his life. A secret haunts him: in 1943, at thirteen, in the occupied Langhe, he killed a German soldier with the revolver taken from his father, a Fascist colonel, and hid the body. In the village, he finds his father again and Francesco, the childhood friend who was his companion among the partisans, and the past gradually resurfaces.
Context
The novel was published by Mondadori in 1964 and received the Strega Prize the same year. The narrative combines the journey of the present, some twenty years after the war, and the memories of 1943: the German occupation, the armistice, then the partisans' struggle in the hills. It was published in French by Éditions Autrement in 1998 under the title “L'Ombre des collines”, and was reissued in Italy by Lindau in 2016.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred and fifty pages, which alternates between the journey to the village and the memory of the war years.
Prizes and reception
Its French publisher presented it as an important work of twentieth-century Italian literature.
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