History
Subtitle: a novel
By: Elsa Morante ; translated from the Italian by William Weaver.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Knopf; distributed by Random House
Published: 1977
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; ita
Number of pages: 561
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction.; Italy -- Fiction.
Description: 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.
Notes: Translation of La storia.