Little Girl

The Little Girl (1976), the first novel by the internationally acclaimed Italian writer Francesca Duranti, gives a vivid account of the author’s wartime childhood in Tuscany, during which the young Francesca struggles to reconcile her family’s wealth and privilege with the dangers that her socialist parents, along with the left-wing or Jewish friends they shelter, have to face under the German occupation. The novel brilliantly combines a lively and engaging portrait of a small girl coming to terms with her world with an oblique but revealing insight into a dramatic period of Italian history.