• Premio Strega 2007 · Shortlist

The Innocent Days of War

I giorni innocenti della guerra

Mario Fortunato (born 1958)

Translated by Julia MacGibbon

English editions

In English

• The Innocent Days of War

  Other Press · United States · 28 October 2025 · Paperback · 240 pages

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Four young lives on the eve of the Second World War. In London, soon under German bombs, Edna finds out who she is and what happiness means, while her closest friend, the RAF pilot Alastair Ormiston, reads Virginia Woolf and dreams of the companion he has never found. In central Italy, Stefano Portelli, a promising lawyer with a head full of utopias, is in love with Eleonora, and his sister-in-law Nina is secretly bound to Sergio, a partisan leader who is little more than a boy. As the country slides towards civil war, fate lets these parallel lives cross where no one expects them to.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

213 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, War, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Italy, United Kingdom, 1939–1945

First published

2007 by Bompiani

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9788845257957 (original)

9781635424140 (Other Press, United States)