How I Lost the War

The award-winning screenwriter Filippo Bologna's first novel is a dark and witty environmental satire set in sun-drenched Tuscany. A small and idyllic Tuscan village is cast into disarray by the arrival of Otto Gattai, a larger-than-life, greedy and ruthless businessman who has come to turn its legendary baths into a luxury spa. The young Federico, descendant of the noble Cremona family, loathes his family's participation in the transformation of this antique citadel, and of the lives of its inhabitants. Federico and his girlfriend Lea take action, and when peaceful protests prove inadequate, they and their friends wage a guerrilla war against Gattai. Published by Pushkin Press, Howard Curtis's How I Lost the War (Come ho perso la guerra) was shortlisted for the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Bologna's second novel, The Parrots, will be published by Pushkin Press in 2013.