An old saying states that you can't rewrite history. But what a fascinating practice it is, when is done with such skill like Morselli's. It's an absolutely enthralling experience I think for everyone to discover, in a novel with a very factual and convincing flavour, that if the wicked guys (Germany and Austria) had won the war, there wouldn't have been no nazis, no fascism, no shoa and so on. But the plot is thrilling too, the way the Empires managed to win with a sort of blitzkrieg tactic; it's moving, seeing the inevitable fall of the nevertheless winnign asutrian empire thru' the eyes of an official who secretely deserves all the merit for the victory. The only flaw is a long intermezzo in which the author imagines to argue with the publisher about history, novel and narratology. Quite boring. But maybe it would deserve a second reading. I think the American reader, used to excellent historical novels, would enjoy this book.

Past Conditional : A Retrospective Hypothesis is one of the best books written by one of the best Italian novelists of this century. It is a counterfactual story, which explains how Germans and Austro-Hungarians could have won World War I. The plot is simply breathtaking, and gives the reader an idea of the complexity of the war on the Italian Front; it is fully detailed, and presents you with aspects, facts, scenarios that can be surprising for a non-Italian reader. The historical facts are skilfully mixed with counter-historical fiction, creating a well-crafted plot where the latter help you to see the former in a completely new perspective. Well-written, and thoroughly enjoyable, even for those readers who have only a foggy notion of what W.W.I was like. This book proves that alternate history fiction is not a monopoly of US authors.