From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Village of Secrets, comes the extraordinary story of four courageous women who helped form the Italian Resistance during WW2
Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Her book on the French Resistance, Village of Secrets, was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2014. Her most recent book, A Bold and Dangerous Family, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London.
Moorehead paints a wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the
women of the Italian Resistance...an excellent book... She
depicts a tragic fate that is timeless, of dreams forged in
adversity, shattered by collisions with practical politics -- Max
Hastings * Sunday Times *
Brilliantly and subtly told... The narrative is told with such
verve that I frequently had goosebumps: the men and women known
from much drier history books come alive... a riveting read --
Tobias Jones * Guardian *
A sensitive and perceptive book founded on an appreciation
of the role women play in any society, at any times. It is sober
and serious, but still an easy read... Moorehead is not afraid
to show how these women used their femininity to become more
effective partisans -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *
The moving finale of a quartet of books on resistance to
fascism... Moorehead conveys the terror with understated power;
she is equally good at conjuring the blurred morality of civil
conflict...[and] the valleys and wild flowers in technicolour
detail * Economist *
In the best book she has so far written, Moorehead corrects
this imbalance with a narrative whose coherence perfectly matches
its author's admiration for her subjects' redemptive idealism...
Moorehead needs to be read by Italians themselves. Over here,
meanwhile, she deserves every prize going -- Jonathan Keates
* Literary Review *
This brilliant book restores women to the heart of the
Italian resistance story, making clear that they performed all the
same activities as the men, while facing precisely the same
dangers... This, at last, is their powerful story -- Clare
Mulley * Spectator *
ambitious... a comprehensive, lucid and thoughtful account of a
complicated conflict. * TLS *
Moorehead's quartet of heroines all... left the diaries, the
letters, the documents and the family memories that have allowed
her to tell their eye-opening and spirit-lifting stories so
powerfully -- Boyd Tonkin * The Arts Desk *
A brilliant overview of the war in Italy from the perspective of
the female partisans -- Clare Mulley * Spectator, *Books of 2019*
*
Moorehead skilfully weaves...threads of individual stories together
to create a web of interconnected lives... broad narrative is
dotted with flashes of detail; the colour of a piece of clothing,
the wording of a letter... Moorehead captures a sense of hope and
vitality among the women of the Resistance, fighting with courage
and determination for a future they believed in -- Elsa Maishman *
Scotland on Sunday *
Moorehead ... takes up the story of four friends in Turin who
decided passive resistance was no longer enough [against
Mussolini's reign] and joined a growing partisan movement based in
the remote valleys of Piedmont. This is a bittersweet tale, not of
betrayal, exactly, but of subtle excision from the script * The
Tablet *
A House in the Mountains is a page-turner... This book is to
be welcomed as a highly readable story in its own right, and as an
accessible introduction to the role of women in the Resistenza --
Christian Goeschel * BBC History *
A deeply-researched, fast-paced account of the Italian Resistance,
a story not widely known to the general reader * History of War
*
This is a highly satisfying conclusion to the author's series.
Excellent, well-presented evidence of the incalculable strengths
and abilities of women to create and run a country -- Starred
Review * Kirkus *
[A] moving finale of a quartet of books on resistance to fascism *
Economist *
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