SYNOPSIS

Francesco Trotta is a young Viennese aristocrat who leaves his comfortable life in the city to live more simply in a modest country house with a distant relative of his, Joseph Branco, a wandering chestnut roaster, and his friend Manes Reisiger, a coachman. Then, the First World War breaks out and Francesco is called to arms and in order to stay with his two friends, he asks to be transferred to their infantry regiment. A few hours before leaving for the war, he marries Elisabeth, a young bourgeois he is in love with.
During the fighting, he is captured by the Russians together with his two friends. After a few months of captivity, the three manage to escape and when the war ends, Francesco returns home and tries to save his marriage to Elisabeth. It will not be easy, but in the end he will find a little peace, at least until the day Nazism has put down deep roots in Austria.

REVIEW

It is a pleasant novel to read. Despite the title, which could suggest another type of story, the plot is interesting because the writer’s style makes the reader want to know how it ends. It is a historical novel set between the First World War and the dawn of the Second, in which the reader can perceive the atmosphere of that era and the feelings related to belonging to the homeland, which the author himself probably experienced firsthand.
The author used an only one first-person narrator that is the main character. Some of the characters are physically and psychologically well described while others are more superficial, as if they were strangers who enter and exit the scene without leaving a trace of their presence. There are few dialogues but coherent with the way the characters speak and more indirect speech, in which the writer constantly summarizes and tells the facts from his point of view. There are no changes in pace, but as for the descriptions of the places, they are sometimes lacking and it is not possible to identify where the actions take place.