Epsom Salts After Waxing

The Snack Thief Neve

Retreat from Russia who has experienced first hand the fear, fatigue and the cold of those days "whites" of the Second World War. Sergeant Mario Rigoni Stern and 'a witness, but also a skilled storyteller, able to involve the reader and re-create the charm of the memories evoked by the fireplace. It seems to feel in the hands of the heavy frost that thickened the air, making it as sharp as a blade that will prevent the gun and release the thoughts in the endless white expanses. The pace and 'marked by mortar shells and pale lights burning cigarettes, from time to time, the Russian incursion stirs and urges the soldiers in the trenches to make contact with the other half' of war: the "enemy" entities' mysterious formed by humans helpless, like you, who probably spend their days in that same cold and boredom, but which separates you from a lead line not exactly subtle. The daily routine begins to crack when supplies are slow to arrive and the Russian offensive became more 'frequent. It 's time that the books of history know well, and that Rigoni Stern points out in the din of the shells: the battles marked the beginning of the retreat, including the wounded, burning villages, poignant memories of the distant house, the house that maybe you are then not 'review, and you can just limit yourself to dream, in the warmth of a isba, when you finally take off his backpack from his shoulders and rest your legs, forced into the boots worn. A classic of twentieth-century Italian among the most 'well known and appreciated abroad, recently transformed into the piece theater actor Marco Paolini.
(Mario Rigoni Stern, Einaudi )
My opinion : one of the most 'touching war novels of Rigoni Stern, the writer of Asiago, which in its books, and' managed to make it through the simplicity of 'the depth of the words used' by the experiences he has lived in the first person: the sad and tragic war, as in this case, but also full of life, hope and joy of the mountains. This book, and as 'rightly points out in his preface, can' really be considered as one of the masterpieces of Italian literature of the twentieth century.