How I Lost the War

Filippo Bologna, Howard Curtis

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781906548360
• eBook ISBN:
  9781908968951
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The award-winning screenwriter Filippo Bologna's first novel is a dark and witty environmental satire set in sun-drenched Tuscany. A small and idyllic Tuscan village is cast into disarray by the arrival of Otto Gattai, a larger-than-life, greedy and ruthless businessman who has come to turn its legendary baths into a luxury spa. The young Federico, descendant of the noble Cremona family, loathes his family's participation in the transformation of this antique citadel, and of the lives of its inhabitants. Federico and his girlfriend Lea take action, and when peaceful protests prove inadequate, they and their friends wage a guerrilla war against Gattai. Published by Pushkin Press, Howard Curtis's How I Lost the War (Come ho perso la guerra) was shortlisted for the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Bologna's second novel, The Parrots, will be published by Pushkin Press in 2013.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• You see me the way I am now
• Alive and dead
• According to Professor Voinea
• The castle
• As little boys
• Fede was a good shot
• You should have seen the twins when they were little boys
• As riders, they were in the vanguard
• Roman salutes
• Either you eat your soup
• It’ll be like the day of judgement
• March snow
• Beelzebub
• Or you jump out of the window
• He couldn’t get over it
• Vanni had grown up without Fede
• Vanni had had time
• A name and a destiny
• Well, we wanted development
• And that name was Ottone Gattai
• That’s why we’ll win
• Petrol is still too cheap
• It was a piece of luck
• The Aquatrade Resort
• We’re coming to get you
• The scale model is in the town hall
• The wind is blowing hot and humid
• The first time I saw her
• Young man, don’t do what I did
• For Epiphany, we would play Monopoly
• Peasants were worse than their masters
• Paul Newman
• All of them except us
• Like eels
• What would you say to a cordial
• We’ve done so much for you
• New Year’s Eve with a bang
• Sheiks and gangsters
• The trouble is, I was born here
• Sadat Mawazini
• We are working for ourselves
• They’re cutting down the trees
• The whine of the chainsaws
• The serpent
• As citizens who love and respect
• When the snake dies, its poison dies with it
• Now my father
• I see the swollen bellies of the chub
• People shoot themselves in the foot
• The expropriation
• Not a line
• They were days of fierce clashes and uncertain outcomes
• I watch you sleeping
• There’s just Lea and me
• You haven’t looked me in the eyes since that night
• Your clothes are there
• I’ll go
• We’re almost there
• The reasons for the defeat 
• Dead dinosaurs
• Water
• The smell of hay
• I waited so long for you
• The young woman was Lea
• What an idiot you are
• This isn’t NASA
• Time has passed
• The war is over
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