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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
"Army of the Lost Rivers" — winner of the Premio Strega — 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 was born in 1930 in Cassacco, Udine. He studied at the Normale di Pisa, and now lives an extremely private life in Udine. His works include, among others, Luna color ametista (1971), Il vento nel vigneto (1973), Il trono di legno (1973, winner of the Premio Campiello, published in English as The Wooden Throne by Italica Press), Gli dei torneranno (1977), La carrozza di rame (1979), L'armata dei fiumi perduti (1985, winner of the Premio Strega) and La grand foibe (1992). Carlo Sgorlon's reality mirrors his fiction: a reclusive life in Friuli's countryside, ignoring or challenging modern industrialized society. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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 was born in 1930 in Cassacco, Udine. He studied at the Normale di Pisa, and now lives an extremely private life in Udine. His works include, among others, Luna color ametista (1971), Il vento nel vigneto (1973), Il trono di legno (1973, winner of the Premio Campiello, published in English as The Wooden Throne by Italica Press), Gli dei torneranno (1977), La carrozza di rame (1979), L'armata dei fiumi perduti (1985, winner of the Premio Strega) and La grand foibe (1992). Carlo Sgorlon's reality mirrors his fiction: a reclusive life in Friuli's countryside, ignoring or challenging modern industrialized society. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
