The Officers' Camp

Finalist, 1998 PEN Center West Award for Translation

Historian Giampiero Carocci's only novel is the story of Caro, a young Florentine officer, and his companions from the time of their capture by the Germans in 1943 until their release from a work camp almost two years later. Captured and transported to Germany, their lives seem dreamlike, and nothing stands out, except when someone is killed or disappears, or starves to death. As the months of imprisonment mount and the officers are moved farther away from Italy--and into smaller and more horrific camps--they are reduced to shells of humanity, their hope preserved only by discussions of food and the swapping of elaborate "recipes."

Compared in its mastery and impact with the work of Primo Levi, The Officers Camp was inexplicably overlooked among the accounts of Italian experience in World War Two. This edition is the first available in English.