The Reprisal: A Novel

✍ Scribed by Bonanni, Susan Stewart Laudomia; Teardo, Sara

• Book ID: 108896330
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 102 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780226063805

✦ Synopsis

Overview: 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.