How I Lost The War

Filippo Bologna, Howard Curtis

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781906548360
• eBook ISBN:
  9781908968951
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Time runs slowly in a sleepy Tuscan village once renowned for its thermal baths ... until the arrival of Ottone Gattai, a ruthless businessman who has come to this idyllic countryside to revive the legendary baths as an ultra-modern tourist resort. appalled by the transformation of his beloved birthplace, federico, scion of the landowning Cremona family, decides to take action. When peaceful protest proves ineffective, he and his girlfriend Lea launch a guerilla war against the forces of globalisation. This richly satirical first novel by a brilliant young Italian writer is the story of this strange war.

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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