At war s end, Europe was divided between ourselves and the Soviet Union. With the author, Michael Yarbrough, it has never been an issue whether our side of the barbed-wire was the better place to be. I've ALWAYS assumed as much. But I've ALWAYS regarded it as beside the point.
The point is that on our side, there was the reconstitution with brilliant reforms of the very socio-economic order that led to the Depression in the first place which in its turn led to World War II and 60 million dead by conservative estimate. On the last Friday of January 2020, Kristalina Georgeva of the International Monetary Fund expressed dismay at the parallels between the international economic situation of the roaring 1920s that led to the Depression with the situation today. No surprise to me; it was inevitable. What else is inevitable?
So who is Jean LeFey? At war's end a question loomed: Would there be a Communist revolution in Italy (and France)? This question impinged on the very life, the dream and lethal conspiracy of a (French-Canadian) American visionary serving in the American Army in Italy in the closing days of World War II...and the opening days of the Cold War. He was once a Catholic priest an ancient history professor committed to the defense of Christendom - Christian civilization. He is now a Stalinist committed to the revolutionary Communist unification of Europe, which he believes will be an intellectuals' Europe secure from depression and world war, resurgent in power and culture. He does not seriously suspect that for reasons of state, Stalin does not want a revolution in Italy and has since the war's outset exerted himself to prevent it. All of this in keeping with the novel's theme: The elusiveness of reality or the uncertainty of life. It is inspired by classical Greek tragedy and Graeco-Roman and Germanic epics.
*A paean to internationalist-inspired high treason as well as a cautionary tale against it.
*A metaphor of a spiritual ordeal not only transfixing the epoch of the Cold War, but in different guises our own as well.
*Passionate, heroic, brooding, romantic, sinister, threatening, poignant, tender, wildly ribald.
*A national epic for an Italy -- even a Europe...never to be born. Its hero: Jean LeFey, a professorial blend of Captain Ahab, Lenin, and Woody Allen.