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2 books match the query 'Rigoni Stern, Mario'

cover of The Sergeant in the Snow

The Sergeant in the Snow

Mario Rigoni Stern

Northwestern University Press, 1998

Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one and already a battle veteran at the time of the World War II disaster he describes in The Sergeant in the Snow. In July 1942 three divisions of Italian Alpini troops, specially trained for winter warfare, began retreating--entirely on foot, with no supplies, at temperatures of 30-40 degrees below zero. By the end of the march, 90,000 men were missing or dead and 45,000 frostbitten and wounded.
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cover of The Story of Tonle

The Story of Tonle

Mario Rigoni Stern

Northwestern University Press, 1998

Tönle Bintarn's story takes place in the Veneto region, which once bordered the Austro-Hungarian Empire and where smuggling provided a means of subsistence to the peasants. Having run afoul of revenue agents, Tönle must seek refuge beyond the frontier in Central Europe, where year after year he survives by doing odd jobs and working as an itinerant print peddler, a horse trainer, and a gardener. When he is pardoned he returns home for good to find his children are grown and nothing remains for him but to tend his sheep, while around him Europe spins toward the catastrophe of the Great War--the conflict that will destroy Veneto's unique way of life.
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