We were thrilled to read Cynthia Zarin's New Yorker review of Iris Origo's A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940. Zarin writes:
It’s almost impossible to imagine a better time to read A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939–1940...Trenchant, intelligent, and written with a cool head...it can be read not only as a historical document but as an urgent message, a stealth paper airplane sent to us from a shadowed past...One of the vital interests of the diary is watching the alert, perspicacious mind of a supremely intelligent person coming alive to the situation around her.
Read the rest of the review here, and learn more about A Chill in the Air, which includes an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, and an afterword by Origo's granddaughter Katia Lysy, here. NYRB Classics also publishes Origo's War in Val d'Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944, with an introduction by Virginia Nicholson.