A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940

Origo, a wealthy Englishwoman who supervised a Tuscan estate with her Italian husband, was (justly) made famous by another diary (also reissued by NYRB Classics): The War in Val d'Orcia, covering the chaotic years of 1943 and 1944. These newly translated journals, written during the equally confusing start to the war, make a fascinating bookend to that volume, and in places the echoes of our time are deafening (as when she quotes Mussolini on his most extreme press propagandists: "In a well-ordered household everything is useful, even the garbage."). Unlike the later diary, which contains its share of action, this is mainly a book of reactions, of well-connected gossip and thoughtful bewilderment at the progress toward a war no one in Italy seems to want.