Steven Conte
Autore di The Zookeepers War
Opere di Steven Conte
All'ombra di Tolstoj 1 copia
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Steven Conte
- Data di nascita
- 1966
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- Australia
- Luogo di residenza
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Brussels, Belgium
Cornwall, England, UK
Berlin, Germany - Premi e riconoscimenti
- Australia - Prime Ministers Inaugural Literary Prize for Fiction 2008
Utenti
Recensioni
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Statistiche
- Opere
- 4
- Utenti
- 207
- Popolarità
- #106,920
- Voto
- 3.5
- Recensioni
- 9
- ISBN
- 18
- Lingue
- 1
At the height of the war on the Eastern Front , a Wermacht medical unit commandeers the estate of Leo Tolstoy to set up a field hospital, despite the strident objections of the caretaker Katerina Trubetzkaya. Bookish surgeon Paul Bauer seeks to mollify her hatred of the Germans because of his love of the writer.
The occupation proceeds under bitter wintry conditions that the Germans are ill-prepared for, while the surgeons face mounting body counts as the Russian counter-attacks start to take hold. Paul tries to take refuge in reading Tolstoy, while others resort to drink and other distractions. As it becomes clearer that the Germans are going to be routed, the behaviour of some of the occupiers turns extreme.
Strangely, this book reminded me all the time of MASH. Not for its humour, but for the portrayal of surgeons placed under incredible pressure in the theatre of war, leading them to adopt behaviour, ethics and techniques far from the professional norms that they once held. Conte sets all this in a grim evocation of brutal winter weather and a developing sense of gloom and ill-fatedness.
I really enjoyed this novel, but I thought that the final part was a bit trite and unnecessary. It felt like a clumsy coda to a story that had already been adequately told.… (altro)