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History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history - the great political events driven by men of power, wealth, and ambition - does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion.Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing.Translated from the Italian by William Weaver.
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Other Books in The Vintage Library of Contemporary World Literature Blood of Requited Love BY MANUEL PUIG The Guardian of the Word A Minor Apocalypse BY CAMARA LAYE BY TADEUSZ KONWICKI The Ten Thousand Things BY MARIA DERMOUT We Love Glenda So Much and A Change of Light BY JULIO CORT..I.ZAR Ake: The Years of Childhood Correction BY WOLE soYINKA BY THOMAS BERNHARD Maira BY DAIICY RIBEIRO Masks BY FUMIKO ENCHI One Day of Life BY MANLIO ARGUETA The Questionnaire BY JIRi GRUSA HISTORY A NOVEL HISTORY A NOVEL ELSA MORANTE Translated from the Italian by William Weaver AVENTURA The Vintage Library of Contemporary World Literature VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK First Aventura Edition, March 1984 Translation Copyright© 1977 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. This translation originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1977. Originally published in Italian as La Storia: Romanzo by Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.P.A., Turin. Copyright© 1974 by Elsa Morante and Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.P.A., Torino. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Morante, Elsa, 1916History. ( Aventura-the Vintage library of contemporary world literature ) Translation of: La Storia. I. Title. P Q4829.0615S813 1984 853'.912 83-40512 ISBN 0-394-72496-8 Manufactured in the United States of America Por el anal/abeto a quien escribo There is no word in the human language capable of consoling the guinea pigs who do not know the reason for their death. ( A sun>ivor of Hiroshima ) . . . thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes for so it seemed good in thy sight. Luke 1 0: 21 Contents ...... 19-- I 1 ... .. 1941 I 65 .. ... 1942 I 97 ...... 1943 I 119 ... 1944 I 249 .. ... 1945 I 307 ... 1946 I 331 . . . 1947 I 411 . .... 19-- I 549 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes I 5