The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet a million and half men died in North East Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, waves of Italian conscripts were sent charging up the limestone hills north of Trieste to be massacred by troops fighting to save their homelands. This is a great, tragic military history of a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in these trenches, but so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian and German - Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil, Hemingway. It is through these accounts that Mark Thompson, with great skill and empathy, brings to life this forgotten conflict.

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson is the compelling and moving account of an unknown campaign of the First World War.

About the Author
Mark Thompson lives in Oxford. He is the author of A Paper House, a much-praised account of the fall of Yugoslavia. He worked for the UN in the Balkans for much of the 1990s.

Awards
Short-listed for Orwell Prize 2009.



Book Information
ISBN 9780571223343
Author Mark Thompson
Format Paperback
Page Count 496
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 375g
Dimensions(mm) 195mm * 125mm * 30mm