Bøger af Iris Origo

"At the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman--born in England, married to an Italian--kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d'Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground. At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and compassion, and the devastation that war can bring"--

"A harrowing account of life in Italy in the year leading up to World War II, available in the US for the first time. War in Italy in 1939 was by no means necessary or even beneficial to the country.But in June 1940, Mussolini finally declared war on Britain and France. The awfulinevitability with which Italy stumbled its way into a war for which they were illprepared and largely unenthusiastic is documented here with grace and clarity byone of the twentieth century's great diarists. This diary, which has never been published and was recently found in Iris Origo'sarchives, is the sad and arresting account of the grim absurdities that Italy and theworld underwent as war became more and more unavoidable. Origo, British-bornand living in Italy, was ideally placed to record the events. Extremely engaged withthe world around her, connected to people from all areas of society (from the peasantson her estate to the US ambassador to Italy), she writes of the turmoil, thedanger, and the bleakness of Italy in 1939 and 1940, as war went from a possibilityto a dreadful reality. A chill in the air covers the beginning of a war whose catastrophic effects are documentedin Origo's bestselling War in Val D'Orcia"--

"Images and Shadows, Iris Origo's autobiographical account of her early life, is as extraordinarily perceptive and humane and as beautifully written as her celebrated memoir War in the Val d'Orcia. Origo's father came from an old and moneyed American family, her mother was the daughter of an Irish peer, and she grew up under the most privileged of circumstances, moving between family estates in Long Island and Ireland while also traveling the world. Tragedy struck when her father, not yet 30, died of tuberculosis and at his request--'Bring her up where she does not belong, ' he had enjoined his wife--her mother moved to Fiesole, where she and Iris developed a close friendship with their neighbor, the influential American connoisseur and art historian--a great and fascinating character, too--Bernard Berenson. Introduced early to both American and British high society, Origo eventually found fulfillment in tending to the life of the desolate and deforested country estate she and her Italian husband bought in Italy, which is where she also discovered her true calling as a writer. In Images and Shadows, she paints portraits of her shy, loving father and her headstrong mother, describes beloved places, the books that formed her sensibility, and how she grew up and made her way in the world. She reflects on the pleasures and challenges of writing and evokes both the persistence and fragility of memory. Images and Shadows is an autobiography that is as thoughtful as it is profoundly touching"--