Reprisal
A Novel
In the bitterly cold winter of 1943, the Italian countryside is torn apart by violence as partisans wage a guerilla war against the occupying German army and their local fascist allies. In the midst of this conflict, a ragtag group of fascist supporters captures a woman in the late stages of pregnancy. Suspecting her of being in league with the partisans, they hastily put her on "trial" by improvising a war tribunal one night in the choir stalls of the abandoned monastery that serves as their hide-out. This sham court convicts the woman and sentences her to die – but not until her child has been born. When a young seminarian visits the monastery and tries to dissuade the fascist band from executing their sentence, the absurd tragedy of the woman's fate is cast in stark relief. The child's birth approaches, an unnerving anticipation unfolds, and tension mounts ominously among the characters and within their individual psyches. Based on a number of incidents that took place in Abruzzo during the war, Laudomia Bonanni's compact and tragic novel explores the overwhelming conflicts between ideology and community, justice and vengeance. The story is embedded in the cruel reality of Italian fascism, but its themes of revenge, sacrifice, and violence emerge as universal, delivered in prose that is at once lyrical and brutal. In her native Italy, Bonanni, a writer of journalism and critical prose as well as fiction, is hailed as one of the strongest proponents of post-war realism, and this is the first of her novels to be made available to Anglophone readers. Translators Susan Stewart and Sara Teardo render Bonanni's singular style – both sparse and emotive, frank and poetic – into readable, evocative English.
About the Author
Laudomia Bonanni (1907-2002) was one of the preeminent Italian writers of the mid-twentieth century, and this is her first book to be translated into English.
Susan Stewart is the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. A former MacArthur fellow, she is the author of many books, including the poetry collections "Red Rover" and "Columbarium", winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and most recently, a work of prose entitled "The Poet's Freedom".
Sara Teardo is a lecturer in the Department of French and Italian at Princeton University.
Reviews
"'The Reprisal' is a starkly haunting and disturbing novel, stylistically and thematically innovative; its English translation should be of interest to contemporary feminist criticism of all stripes, students and scholars of the Italian novel, neorealism, Fascism, and the literature of World War II. Laudomia Bonanni's novel, completed in 1985, was only published in Italy posthumously, in 2003. Now, 'The Reprisal' and Bonanni can assume their rightful place in the canon of Italian novels about the war and resistance, along with authors such as Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, and Elsa Morante. In this eloquent and accurate translation, Susan Stewart and Sara Teardo provide a welcome rehabilitation of one of the most penetrating portrayals of cruelty and poverty under the conditions of war, and of the deep wellspring of strength of female archaic resistance" – Margaret Brose, University of California, Santa Cruz
"I have before me the book of an unknown woman, Laudomia Bonanni. This work emerged from a competition and won a prize for literature. I am wary of such prizes, but I must admit there are exceptions and this Laudomia truly deserves to be brought out from the shadows. She reveals a narrative strength that must not conclude here. She is sure to go a long way" – Eugenio Montale
