A dark love story set in wartime Rome from the author of In Love and Your Face for the World to See

Rome, 1944. Robert is a lonely American soldier looking for a girl. Lisa is cold and hungry, obliged to seek work at Mamma Pulcini's house on the Via Flaminia. Their lives come together in what should be a simple exchange, a temporary arrangement without love or complication. But in a city broken by war, its people defeated, nothing is simple. Based on Alfred Hayes'own experiences of wartime Italy, this spare, searing novel exposes the dark complexities of the relationship between men and women, victor and vanquished.

'Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences' Paul Bailey, Guardian

'Rings true as gold ... every single character in the book is sharp with the infallible stroke of art' Daily Mail

A dark love story set in wartime Rome from the author of In Love and Your Face for the World to See.


About the Author
Alfred Hayes (1911-1985) was born in London and grew up in New York, where he later worked as a newspaperman. After joining the army in 1943 he served with the US forces in Italy. While in Rome he met Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini on the film Paisa, and began his career in script-writing. He moved to Hollywood to work in the movies and was twice nominated for an Oscar for his scripts. Hayes' seven novels include The Girl on the Via Flaminia (1949), In Love (1953), My Face for the World to See (1958) and The End of Me (1968).

Reviews

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

* Kirkus Reviews *
It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world * The New York Times *
Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences * Guardian *
A sensitive and gorgeously wrought study of connections and misconnections, this masterpiece of the period perfectly captures a short, but unique, period in history * Mostly Fiction *
Hayes balances a bitter depiction of an unforgiving world with sympathy for the sad evasive manoeuvres of the human psyche... His novels perfectly capture the texture of midcentury American life ... His work must come back to us in all its brutal honesty * Los Angeles Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780241342329
Author Alfred Hayes
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 123g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 8mm