Army of the Lost Rivers [Paperback]

Carlo Sgorlon (Author), Jessie Bright (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2008

Sgorlon's novel is based on the encounter between the Friulans and the Cossacks in this little-known tragedy of World War II. In the summer of 1944 a Cossack army complete with its dependents - women, children, and the aged, along with horses, camels, tents, and icons - descended on Friuli. In exchange for supporting the Germans against the Red Army, the Germans had promised them this region in mountainous, northeastern Italy as a new homeland, and then the Germans abandoned both the invading Cossacks and the native Friulans to their terrible fates. Against this alpine backdrop, beneath the nightly bombing flights of the Flying Fortresses and between the retreating Germans and the advancing Americans, townspeople, partisans and Cossacks are caught in an ominous web. Carlo Sgorlon has also published an English translation of his novel, "The Wooden Throne," with Italica Press. Winner of the Premio Strega in 1985.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the midst of senzapatria (a state of rootless disenfranchisement), the characters of Sgorlon's bleak and brilliant novel know only the "dark Babylon of war." In the final hours of WWII the Nazis "give" Friuli, a region of Italy bordering on Austria, to the Cossack bands who have collaborated with them on the Eastern Front against the Soviet forces. Marta is the Friulian housekeeper for a Russian Jewish refugee named Esther. When Esther is deported by the Germans, Marta keeps the villa, sheltering a partisan soldier, Ivos, and refusing to accept Esther's death. As the expatriated Cossacks arrive in 1944 "like a plague of grasshoppers," the commander of the local Cossack division, Gavrila, quarters himself in Marta's villa. Entanglements, romantic and otherwise, occur. The truce established by Urvan, another commander and Marta's lover, with the Friuli villagers is broken when some Cossacks rape and kill a peasant beauty. As the atrocities multiply, it becomes clear that Cossack culture cannot long survive in the Friuli valleys. Sgorlon's (The Wooden Throne) sympathy, like his point of view, is divided evenly between the terrorized (and emotionally torn) indigenous people and the bewildered, aggressive Cossack refugees. Neo-realism may at times sit uneasily with a sort of swollen romanticismAUrvan's Slavic soul is "vast" and Marta is the eternal feminine principleAbut these moments are quite easy to ignore in this grave and intelligent novel. (Apr.) FYI: Army of the Lost Rivers won the Premio Strega when it was published in Italy in 1985.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Italica Press (September 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934977623
• ISBN-13: 978-0934977623
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,303,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not so gripping, May 10, 2007

By 

Patrick Miller (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Army of the Lost Rivers (Paperback)

Carlo Sgorlon won high praise for this work in Italian. While I have no doubt Jessie Bright's English translation is a good one I'm afraid that the narrative is a little turgid by the standards of good English writing.

Nonetheless, for a student of this particular episode in Italian/Cossack history this is an essential book. What Sgorlon has done is to take a "human interest" angle to examine the invasion of Friuli by the Cossack nation that lasted from August 1944 until May 1945. His gift to us is an insight into the Cossack side of the story. He shows us with some sympathy a people that had been tricked by the Germans, lost their homeland to the Soviets, who were being bombed by the Allies and shot at by the partisans. He shows their burning but frustrated desire to fight the Soviets (their only reason for aligning themselves with the Germans who they despised) and to regain their homeland, their "lost rivers". He also touches on their shameful handing over to the Soviets by the Allies after the war and hints at their eventual fate.

Perhaps inevitably his ending concentrates on what happens to the main characters. This means he doesn't follow the fate of the Cossacks after the Allies hand them over to the Soviets, because none of his characters make that far.

But the book is stylishly written and apparently well translated. I'm sure that its literary style is more suited to Italian readeship in its original form rather than English.