Description
Set against the upheaval of World War II in the mountains south of Rome, this novel follows Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose life is shattered by loss and forced into survival amid the war’s relentless reach. As a German soldier’s violence and sudden attachment upend her future, Ida becomes bound to a fragile hope—while her teenage son drifts through danger with a cruel, youthful indifference. Around them, lives intersect and scatter like debris in a flood: raids, brutal crimes, the terror of deportation, and the quiet endurance of peasants stripped to the barest necessities. With Morante’s lyrical intensity and unflinching moral vision, the book interrogates how “history”—made by power and ambition—arrives in ordinary bodies as hunger, fear, and irreversible change.
Available Editions
paperback
Steerforth
Published Feb 24, 2015
755 pages
ISBN: 9781586422370
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Details
First Published
1974
Language
eng
Translation
From: ita
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for History by Elsa Morante.