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    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna: A Novel
    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna: A Novel
    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna: A Novel
    Ebook338 pages

    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna: A Novel

    By Andrea Molesini

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The international bestseller and winner of the Campiello Prize for Literature—“Moving and lyrical writing . . . Belongs in the canon of great war fiction” (Paste Magazine).
     
    Andrea Molesini’s exquisite debut novel portrays the depths of heroism and horror within a Northern Italian village toward the end of World War I. While a family’s villa is requisitioned by enemy troops, they are forced to intimately confront war’s injustice as their involvement with its sinister underpinnings grows more and more complex.
     
    In the autumn of 1917, Refrontolo—a small community north of Venice—is invaded by Austrian soldiers as the Italian army is pushed to the Piave River. The Spada family owns the largest estate in the area, where orphaned seventeen-year-old Paolo lives with his eccentric grandparents, headstrong aunt, and a loyal staff. With the battlefront nearby, the Spada home becomes a bastion of resistance, both clashing and cooperating with the military members imposing on their household. When Paolo is recruited to help with a covert operation, his life is put in irrevocable jeopardy. As he bears witness to violence and hostility between enemies, he grows to understand the value of courage, dignity, family bonds, and patriotism during wartime.
     
    “Wonderfully alive—often terribly so—as a wartime adventure and story of youth arriving at manhood.” —The New York Times Book Review
     
    “War and Peace meets The Leopard in a novel set among Italian aristocrats during the Great War . . . Rich and moving.” —The Wall Street Journal
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 2, 2016
    ISBN9780802190192
    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna: A Novel

    Reviews for Not All Bastards Are from Vienna

    3.5/5

    34 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Another book that I could not put down, and thanks to daylight savings time I did have that extra hour so yes I read for hours again.

      The book begins in Italy 1917. The aristocratic Spada family's villa will soon be overrun. War is hell, soldiers are animals, and still are. What is wrong with some men?

      But the book never got dark. I would not exactly call it light, but it had this feeling of hope. I would credit that to the main person Paolo, he was 17, but he still had hope of a future without war. He still has time to fall in love, or lust with someone. And his light makes the book lighter.

      He lives with his quirky grandparents. His gran takes lovers, his granpa quotes Buddha. Then there Aunt Maria who rules. There are 3 servants, and beautiful Giulia. And of course different occupants of the villa.

      They are all trying to go on as normal, live their lives, but as the invaders show their ruthlessness they all want to do something about it.

      Such a good, and well written book. The words just flow by, light, easy to read and a book that you just can not put down.

      And as it is a translation, I say that it's a well done translation too.

      I'd recommend it.
    • 4/5
      This Italian award winning novel begins in 1917 as the Austrian army takes over the Villa Spada in Refrontolo, Italy, home to an aristocratic family—two grandparents; aunt Maria; 17-year-old orphaned grandson Paolo—and their servants. The story is told through the eyes of Paolo, whose journey to manhood, including his involvement in the resistance movement and his initiation into love , carry the narrative. The atrocities of war are juxtaposed with the humor of the characters, especially that of the grandpa Gugliemo, who shares his insights and sleeping quarters with our narrator. As the enemy troops search for valuables, it is grandpa who explains, ‘War and loot are the only faithful married couple. " Andrea Molsini creates a handful of memorable characters here that influence Paolo and help to provide insights about this time period just before the end of World War I, including Renaldo, who, though a servant for the family, works for the Italian secret forces, and Aunt Maria, the strong caretaker of the family estate. "Aunt Maria –Donna Maria to outsiders –was fine-looking, the victim of a haughty manner which both fascinated men and kept them at a distance. She was courted with circumspection by even the boldest and most passionate spirits: not a light cross to bear."As mentioned in back notes, Molesini used the actual diaries of Maria Spada as a resource for novel. The Villa Spada acted as a microcosm of the the war, giving insights to the lives of those occupied countries. Some memorable passages are quoted below to provide a sense of the writing:"Giulia was chaos personified, an irresistible force. Grandpa had described her as the crupper of a horse, the shudder it gives, the lash of its tail on a horsefly. But she was far, far more than that: she was beautiful, she was ablaze. She regarded me with the hauteur of one who, knowing herself desired, strives not to reproach the unrequited lover.""The soldiers took no notice of us, and still less did the officers, who whiled away their time smoking, playing cards and drinking an insipid brandy that according to Grandpa tasted of dry dung, iron and rotting leather, ‘the same taste as war’.""Inside the house, the odour of poverty was notable for its absence. And that was an odour that I knew all too well. In Venice, I’d smelt it in homes I’d entered, on occasion, with a servant visiting her family. It had something to do with the odour of ashes, chickpea soup, and inadequately dried clothing."
    • 4/5
      The unusual setting of this novel is its most appealing feature. The focus is the small Northern Italian village of Refrontolo at the end of WWI (1917). This front never carried the notoriety of places like Gallipoli or Ypres and most non-Italians are probably unaware that Italy joined the Allies late in the Great War fighting the Germans and Austrians in this region just north of Venice. The story is loosely based on the diaries of Maria Spada, fictionalizing the impact that the war had on the people living in her village. First the Germans and then the Austrians commandeer the Spada villa while bogged down against the Italians at the Piave River. The Spadas were an aristocratic family who, along with their staff and the village priest, provide the novel with some of its most interesting and eccentric characters. The narrator, Paolo, is an orphaned seventeen-year-old living at the villa with his grandparents. He tells of the covert resistance to the invaders that his family and the villa’s staff engaged in and his own sexual awakening. His beloved grandfather, Gugliemo, is an iconoclast who spends most of his time pretending to write great literature. His equally eccentric grandmother, Signora Nancy, is in the habit of taking sequential lovers, whom she numbers; receives periodic purges performed by her devoted servant, Theresa; and really is the power figure in the family’s resistance activities. Her clever resistance efforts include signaling to British pilots with the villa’s windows and the patterns of how its laundry is hung. Aunt Maria plays a Mata Hari-like role by entertaining the enemy commanders with meals and romance. Other important figures in the story are Renato, a heroic spy, and Guilia, an attractive young woman. Paolo admires and loves both of these bold characters. The village priest, Don Lorenzo, runs its school with an iron fist, but generally is treated with disdain by the other characters. The Austrian commander, the Baron, seems to know that the family is part of the resistance, but never acts on it because he is enthralled with Aunt Maria. His internal conflict between duty and romance is an important theme in the book. Another theme is the coming-of-age of Paolo where he learns of the brutality and inhumanity of war, the value of courage, the importance of loyalty to family and country and his own sexual yearnings.This novel shows the awakening of a young man to the futility and brutality of World War I, but others have done this more effectively. However, its focus on a single family and village at a relatively unheralded front seems unique. Molesini successfully manages to evoke this with humor in an adventure populated with interesting characters.

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    Not All Bastards Are from Vienna - Andrea Molesini

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