A Private Affair
Author/Uploaded by Beppe Fenoglio
A Private Affair About the Author About the Translator Introduction MAP A PRIVATE AFFAIR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Start of content &#...
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A Private Affair About the Author About the Translator Introduction MAP A PRIVATE AFFAIR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Start of content 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 About the Author BEPPE FENOGLIO (1922-1963) was born into a working-class family in Alba, in the Piedmontese region of Italy, the son of a butcher. He enrolled in the University of Turin in 1940 (he would never receive his degree) and in January 1943 he was conscripted into the Italian army. Later that same year, following the German occupation of Italy, he and his brother Walter joined the partisan Resistance. A disastrous battle between partisans and Fascists forced the brothers to take refuge in the family home; the whole family was arrested and soon released, apart from the two young men, who were only freed as part of an exchange of prisoners. Fenoglio worked for a wine firm after the war and began to write. The Twenty-Three Days of the Town of Alba was published in 1952. It was followed by Ruins and Spring of Beauty, which won the Prato Prize in 1960. Fenoglio contracted lung cancer in 1962 and died the following year, just before his forty-first birthday. Some of his most famous works, including Johnny the Partisan, Saturday’s Pay, and A Private Affair, were published posthumously, through the efforts of friends and scholars. About the Translator HOWARD CURTIS lives in Norwich, England. He has translated more than a hundred books, mostly fiction, from Italian, French, and Spanish. The many Italian writers he has translated include Luigi Pirandello, Leonardo Sciascia, Gianrico Carofiglio, Giorgio Scerbanenco, and Gianfranco Calligarich. Introduction ON 8TH SEPTEMBER 1943, the Italian government led by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, which just over a month earlier had deposed Benito Mussolini’s Fascists, signed an armistice with the Allies, who at that very moment were invading southern Italy. The response of the Germans was to sweep into northern and central Italy, seizing the major cities and disbanding the Italian army. On 10th September, they occupied Rome. Among those caught up in the panic of the German advance was a young man of twenty-one from the hilly area south of Turin known as Le Langhe, who was in Rome attending an army officer training course. His name was Beppe (Giuseppe) Fenoglio, he was the son of a butcher from Alba, the main town of Le Langhe, and he had been a student in Turin before being conscripted into the army. Somehow, he managed to escape from Rome and get back to Alba. In Le Langhe, as elsewhere, a Resistance movement soon came into being. At the same time, the Fascists regrouped and the Germans set up Mussolini as the puppet leader of a Fascist republic in northern Italy. What followed over the next year and a half was in the nature of a civil war, more often a question of Italians against Italians than Italians against Germans. In January 1944, Beppe Fenoglio joined a local Communist partisan group. When this group was disbanded after being defeated by the Fascists at the battle of Carrù, he returned home. In September 1944, he and his brother Walter took to the hills again, this time fighting with the “blue” partisans who had remained loyal to Marshal Badoglio. When the war was over, Fenoglio decided against pursuing his studies, but thanks to his knowledge
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