In the writer Olivia Manning we were missing a great referent of a narrative more than committed to the chronicle of the XNUMXth century in Europe subjected to great conflicts. And I say "we got lost" because fortunately a publishing house like Libros del Asteroides seems to want to recover this narrator between the experiences and the interest in that humanism in the shadows that is every story after the warlike.
So welcome is this interest in divulging much more than a literary work. Because between the biographical, satin to a certain point of fiction, we enter a wide scenario made adventure between the misfortune of war.
The two trilogies, the Balkan and the Levant, were supported in their day by a large reading public. It never hurts to resume that testimony today in the face of similar omens of wars that currently appear in the opposite direction, from the east to the west of a Europe that seems never to wake up from the nightmare of conflicts between nationalisms of diverse colors...
Top Recommended Olivia Manning Novels
the great fortune
While everything was blown up, countries like Romania still remained on the unstable lifeline of a neutrality always threatened by the attempts of Nazism. That country is where we find ourselves to see the sinister light of the Second World War awaken. Among the shadows, with a dedication to inertia, autarky and hope, Bucharest woke up despite everything every day with a strange glimmer of hope...
A newlywed English couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle, arrive in Bucharest, the so-called Paris of the East, in the fall of 1939, just weeks after the German invasion of Poland. In this city full of contrasts, mired in uncertainty due to war and political instability, the introverted Harriet will have to share her husband, a university professor, with a wide circle of new friends and acquaintances.
Meanwhile, the city's inhabitants, be they privileged English expats or the local population, try to hold on to a vibrant everyday life as chaos engulfs Romania and the rest of Europe.
the plundered city
When the time comes to opt for a faction in the middle of a war, the choice will never be free or free. Now the semi-biographical plot of Olivia Manning is permeated by the aroma of gunpowder and blood of war. Hope was a vain puerile exercise and reality imposes itself with the harshness of someone who is pushed into conflict, first of all among the country's own inhabitants.
Bucharest, 1940. Harriet and Guy Pringle, English expatriates who arrived in the city a few months earlier, are following with concern the evolution of political events at a time of great instability: Paris has fallen and it is rumored that Germany is about to invade Romania; in the streets of the capital the revolution seems imminent and the fascists of the Iron Guard do not stop gaining followers. In an increasingly hostile and precarious environment that will test both their marriage and their friendships, Harriet and Guy will have to make risky decisions and choose wisely who they can trust.
Based on the author's experiences, this novel, the second volume of the acclaimed trilogy that began with The Great Fortune, follows the Pringle couple during World War II and draws an extraordinary portrait of Europe at the time. Considered one of the great British fictions about war, the Balkan Trilogy is an essential work to which you should always return.
