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    A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism
    A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism
    A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism
    Audiobook13 hours

    A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism

    Written by Caroline Moorehead

    Narrated by Derek Perkins

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    ""Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope."" —Wall Street Journal

    The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the ""moving finale"" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet—the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II.

    In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women—Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca—living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women—like this brave quartet—who swelled its ranks.

    The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule—with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism—was unrelentingly violent and brutal.

    Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 28, 2020
    ISBN9780062985279
    Author

    Caroline Moorehead

    Caroline Moorehead is the New York Times bestselling author of the Resistance Quartet, which includes A Bold and Dangerous Family, Village of Secrets, and A Train in Winter, as well as Human Cargo, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. An acclaimed biographer, she has written for the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Independent. She lives in London and Italy.

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    Reviews for A House in the Mountains

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    • 5/5
      very well researched! I never had any idea about this subject!
    • 4/5
      It wasn't until I listened to the audiobook of Mark Sullivan's Beneath a Scarlet Sky that I gave much thought to the Italian Resistance during World War II. Yes, I knew it existed, but that's about it. Then I came across A House in the Mountains, the true story of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca-- four women who risked everything to defeat Fascism in Italy-- and I knew I had to read it. This is a rich, dense book filled with historical detail. I learned that Italy basically had to fight for its own survival with little outside help. The entire country and its inhabitants were held in deep suspicion by the UK and the US because of Mussolini's twenty-year reign. Besides, they believed the country was about to turn Communist anyway, and neither wanted to help Communists. Then Mussolini was overthrown, and now the Italian people had a new enemy: Germany. A sentence that made my blood run cold: "Italy, which had been a useless ally, was now occupied by men [Nazis] who had learned in Eastern Europe how to treat useless people." Italy was now being brutally stripped of everything the Third Reich needed to fuel the war effort, and anyone who tried to stand in the way was murdered. The first to stand up and fight back were the women of Italy, who had been totally disenfranchised during Mussolini's reign. They stood up in their thousands and joined the Resistance, risking everything for their freedom.A House in the Mountains is fascinating and inspiring, showing how the Resistance in Italy began and how it gathered strength, and I appreciate having a much better understanding of Italy and its people now.
    • 2/5
      If I had recalled the other Moorehead title I read, I wouldn’t have bothered. She has an editing problem. You get much more than you think you’re getting. Here, Moorehead feels she needs to re-tell the entire story of the war in Italy and the rest of the region. Her coverage of her supposed main characters is spotty and she keeps slipping away to tell all the mens stories as well.
    • 4/5
      This is a well researched and written book for a narrow audience. My only complaint is the book's subtitle "the women who liberated Italy from Fascism". The insertion of the word "helped" would have made the cover less misleading. The book generally follows the lives of four women who become members of the resistance against Mussolini and his government during World War 2 and after with their disappointment that women didn't get their deserved credit and the benefits they hoped for in post war Italy. Well worth reading if this topic appeals to you.