Caroline Moorehead
Life & Death in the Susa Valley
Partisan Diary: A Woman’s Life in the Italian Resistance
By Ada Gobetti (Translated & edited by Jomarie Alano)
Oxford University Press 384pp £22.99
Ada Prospero was sixteen when she became engaged to Piero Gobetti, the rising young star of the intellectual anti-Fascist movement in post-First World War Turin. Together they embarked on defying Mussolini and his Blackshirts. She was twenty-three when, in 1926, Gobetti died of a heart attack perhaps brought on by the injuries he had received at their hands, leaving her with a month-old son, Paolo. Holding staunchly to her passionate anti-Fascism throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, she eventually joined the partisans rising up to fight the Germans and the Fascists for the liberation of Italy. Now this remarkable woman’s diary of those months of warfare has been excellently translated and annotated by Jomarie Alano.
Ada Gobetti’s diary opens on 10 September 1943, the day on which she saw the first German soldiers enter Turin. An armistice had been signed between General Badoglio and the Allies, and the Germans had rapidly occupied all northern and central Italy down to Naples. She kept it going until the beginning of the insurrection twenty months later, writing cryptic notes in English that only she could read. When the war ended her longtime friend and mentor Benedetto Croce encouraged her to turn it into a
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Is the regulation of speech necessary for achieving wider social goods?
Jonathan Sumption examines the question.
Jonathan Sumption - War of Words
Jonathan Sumption: War of Words - What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea by Fara Dabhoiwala
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1524, hundreds of thousands of peasants across Germany took up arms against their social superiors.
Peter Marshall investigates the causes and consequences of the German Peasants’ War, the largest uprising in Europe before the French Revolution.
Peter Marshall - Down with the Ox Tax!
Peter Marshall: Down with the Ox Tax! - Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper
literaryreview.co.uk
The Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky, who died yesterday, reviewed many books on Russia & spying for our pages. As he lived under threat of assassination, books had to be sent to him under ever-changing pseudonyms. Here are a selection of his pieces:
Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books
Book reviews by Oleg Gordievsky
literaryreview.co.uk