I am shocked to find the great many people who are unaware of Mussollinni's ill-fated pursuit of glory in the east. His broken dreams left many Italian families orphaned and widowed. This well written account of the brutality of combat on the Eastern front is a fine addition to any WW2 eastern front library. It is well written and fascinating.

Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one - and already a battle veteran - at the time of the hallucinatory World War II disaster searchingly described in this book. In July 1942, the Italian forces in Russia totaled 230,000 men. They included three divisions of Alpini troops, specially trained for winter warfare; the author of this book belonged to one of these, the Tridentina. In December, the troops began retreating, entirely on foot, with no supplies, at a temperature of 30-40 degrees below zero. Many of the troops, overcome by exhaustion, broke away from the column; others were cut off and captured by the Russians, others lost in the steppes. In the end, about 90,000 were missing or dead, about 45,000 frostbitten and wounded." "This narrative, together with his novel The Story of Tonle and several other works, paints a broad fresco of Italy's history in this century, chronicling social and political change so radical and profound that it has touched even those in such secluded provincial communities as that which Rigoni Stern has so masterfully described.

I've heard many times that rigoni Stern's "Sergeant in the Snow"is one of the best memoirs on eastern front,however,very unfortunately this book has long been out of stock in most book stores.At first time I purchsed this book, I was bit dismayed by its size-it's just little more than 100 pages .but shortly after I started reading the book. I can't stop reading it..Not only Rigoni Stern's honest and realistic potrayal of the war but also the beauty of each sentence which is so powerful that it constantly conjures up images of snow,trench, soldiers who had completely normal lives before war ..love,homesick,girls,friends,comradeship,bravity..and a young master sergeant whose humanity and will for life shines and finally prevails all unbearable physical and mental exhaution.
another attraction is that although Rigoni had already been a seasoned veteran by the time his Division became a part of unfortunate Italian 8th Army .he didn't lose his sanity and love for people.(he is very symphathetic to poor Russian people and even his enemy ..) Unlike Guy Sayer , Rigoni Stern doesn't intend to invoke sensationalism by describing death ,multilated bodies, and combat ,but the book conveyed sense of desperation and symphathy for those who lost during the retreat and break out .
The book will be particulary helpful to understand solders of often unfairly labelled Italian 8th army in Russia.

A collection of Di Lampedusa's writings aside from his great novel. The memoirs of the author's youth in aristocratic Sicily are delightful to read; clearly the atmosphere of the Leopard was taken from Di Lampedusa's own life. The stories are also quite good. The literary criticism is somewhat out of place, in my opinion, alongside a collection of narrative. If you liked the Leopard, this is definitely worth reading.

Everybody has to read this book, especially the siren, this story collect all the dreams of a man, and let us to think that when we find the right woman, the right love, we can't forget it, we can't substitute it, we can't hide it to ourselves.The author with a very simple story express the meaning of the love, the pure love...read it, I can just tell you this...and you'll dream...you'll smile

I think that everybody has to read this book, especially the siren, this story collect all the dreams of a man, and let us to think that when we find the right woman, the right love, we can't forget it, we can't substitute it, we can't hide it to ourselves.The author with a very simple story express the meaning of the love, the pure love...read it, I can just tell you this...and you'll dream...you'll smile.

A slowly crumbling dynasty. An erratic leader. A turbulent political landscape. Giuseppe Lampedusa's The Leopard takes the reader through the political revolution in Italy during the 1860s through the lens of an aging Sicilian prince. The prince, Don Fabrizio, is a tragic character whose struggle evokes many different emotions that will be interesting to most readers. Don Fabrizio's response to the instability highlights the complexities of leadership and hierarchy. The book is a good leisure read for anyone who likes historical fiction.

I approached The Leopard with high expectations which were thoroughly satisfied. The novel, apparently based on the life of di Lampedusa's great-grandfather, is the story of a proud, sensual, Sicilian aristocrat at the time of Italy's Risorgimento (1860 or thereabouts), and his reaction to the changes he sees in his society: mainly the inevitable, indeed necessary, but still in some ways regrettable displacement of the aristocracy from their traditional position. The title character is a wonderful creation, and the lesser characters about him (his wife and children, his favorite nephew, the Jesuit priest Father Pirrone, and so on), are also very elegantly depicted. The Sicilian countryside, and telling details of social life at that time period, are also fascinating elements of the book. And finally, the prose is wonderful, and this translation seems very good, save for just a couple mild moments of clunkiness.

The Leopard is the story of Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, at the time of the main action a man in his forties, with several children. He is a sort of benevolent tyrant in his household, a man of a very old family, accustomed to knowing his place and to having those about him know their places. The Prince is also a man of great sensual appetites, careless with his money (though not wasteful or dissolute), politically knowledgeable but completely apolitical in action, and also an amateur astronomer of some note.

When the story opens, the Risorgimento is ongoing, but it is clear that it will be ultimately successful, and that the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies will be absorbed into the newly unified, somewhat more democratic, Italy. Don Fabrizio, out of loyalty, is nominally supportive of the old regime, but he realistically stays out of the conflict. His favorite nephew, Tancredi, the penniless but charismatic son of his sister, is an ardent supporter of Garibaldi (leader of the revolution).

Several long chapters, separated by months, follow the progress of the Risorgimento at a distance, and more closely follow events which impinge directly on Don Fabrizio's life, yet which reflect the coming societal changes. These include the plebiscite to confirm popular support for the unification of Italy, his nephew Tancredi's love affair and eventual marriage to the daughter of a wealthy but decidedly lower class neighbor, his daughter's reaction to the attentions of a friend of Tancredi's, and Father Pirrone's visit to his home village. Finally, the action jumps forward some decades to the Prince's death, in a very moving and beautiful chapter, then still further forward to the household of his unmarried daughters in their old age.

The events of the story tellingly illustrate both the changing face of society and also the nature of Sicilian society in general. At another level, the Prince's aging and death, and his knowledge of his own mortality, echo the senescence of his class. Loving descriptions of the Prince's homes, of his meals, of balls, of hunting, of peasant life, of politics both at the Prince's level and at the level of the peasants, of the attitude of churchmen towards their flock (especially Father Pirrone's toleration but not approval of his friend's sensual escapades) are laced throughout the novel. Moreover, the Prince himself is a truly compelling, charismatic character, full of faults but an admirable man nonetheless. Also, the narrator's voice is often with us, ironically, often even cynically, commenting on the expectations of the characters and both their failings and the failings of "real life" to meet their expectations, but, though sad, the voice is never bitter.

The grace and power of this story could be quite overwhelming if it weren't for the cleverness we all adopt while reading it, so that at its end, we are neither shocked nor saddened, but rather challenged to take up our own pathetic cudgels and go at the world ourselves. Or not. A beautful tale.

Italo Calvino is an artist in many different meanings of that word. But his first book, _The Path to the Nest of Spiders_, brings another view to the author. Told from the perspective of the child, Calvino is able to use his fantastic style, as well as his earthy analysis of the situations that arise. The Characters are both real and symbols, from the Sister who shares her bed each night, to the cook that is both an anarchist and a father to the boy. Calvino is truly a master at his craft, and this book shows where he came from, and how he is able to see the world and write about it

Experimental, historical, cynical, considerably meditative, innocently gloomy, and yet, as the author indicated, exaggerated, distorted.

It is a hightly sophisticated first try, but as most first novels do, its narrative style lacks the harmony and refinement that the author has worked on in his later career.

I looked for this book for years after reading about it in a Gore Vidal essay I believe. Finally I noticed it was in print again and so I at last read it. This may not be Calvino's best to Calvino fans but to those of us who aren't particular fans of the Calvino style this is his first book and so the style isn't altogether there yet. To me that is a good thing. As artists become masters of their craft they begin to control their material to such an extent that nothing is left to chance. The charm of this book is that Calvino is not in complete command and so the book has a kind of raw innocence very suitable to its subject matter(WWII Italy) and lead character(a child). This is a very earthy book and that word does not apply to later Calvino. All the stuff is here that will later appear in more perfect form, but for this material he is in just the right form.