Overview
Angelo, a private in Mussolini's 'ever-glorious' Italian army, may possess the virtues of love and an engaging innocence but he lacks the gift of courage. However, due to circumstances beyond his control, he ends up fighting not only for Italy but also for the British and German armies. With his patron the Count, the beautiful Lucrezia, the charming Annunziata, and the delightful Major Telfer, Angelo's fellow characters are drawn with humour, insight and sympathy, making the book a wittily satirical comment on the grossness and waste of war. Eric Linklater, who served with the Black Watch in Italy in World War II, is one of Scotland's most distinguished writers. In Private Angelo he has written a book which demonstrates that honour is not solely the preserve of the brave.
Full Product Details
Author: Eric Linklater ,
Magnus Linklater
Publisher: Canongate Books
Imprint: Canongate Books
Edition: Main
Volume: 13
Dimensions:
Width: 12.60cm
, Height: 1.70cm
, Length: 19.60cm
Weight: 0.178kg
ISBN: 9780862413767
ISBN 10: 0862413761
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 04 May 1999
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
The drollest medley of muddle and misadventure . . . A quite unforgettable group of people take part, none of whom lacks the genuine Linklater stamp . . . A high-spirited entertainment which never loses its individual air. <i>Sunday Times</i>
A book that is better in its parts than in its whole, and more significant for its urbane dissection of the Italian peasant, than for its cohesive story. He shows him - in the character of Private Angelo, with his talent for survival rather than combat, with his passive, philosophic acceptance, his high hearted rather than stout hearted conduct. The haphazard fortunes of war as he sees it shifts him from Italian to German to English armies; his patron, the Count, is taken by the Germans and liberated and both older man and younger survive the changing occupation-first German, then British. There's international imbroglio of amatory involvements. Angelo marries Lucresia after she has given birth to a child by an English soldier, and later he brings back from the wars widowed Annunziata and her Polish child. It is a loosely constructed, good humored tale, of no profound importance. (Kirkus Reviews)
He writes not only of an angel, but like one . . . Private Angelo is now a permanent portrait in the heavenly gallery of human frailty. -- Observer
Author Information
Eric Linklater (1899-1974) was born in Wales and educated in Aberdeen. His family came from the Orkney Islands (his father was a master mariner), and the boy spent much of his childhood there. Linklater served as a private in the Black Watch at the close of WWI, surviving a nearly fatal head wound to return to Aberdeen to take a degree in English. A spell in Bombay with the Times of India was followed by some university teaching in Aberdeen again, and then a Commonwealth Fellowship which allowed him to travel in America from 1928 to 1930.
