Isabella Pallavicini

The Interpreter Isabella Pallavicini

Enzo is the child of an Italian family who emigrated to Switzerland. He spends his childhood summers in Sicily, where he immerses himself in the way of life there, learning to love the Italian sense of family. In 1942, he is forced to break off his studies in Germany when he is drafted to Italy to join the war effort. He is deployed as an interpreter in Rome and on the island of Lampedusa. His cousins are caught up in the war too, working as a fighter pilot, a priest in the Vatican who helps refugees, and a partisan. Another of them acts as an intermediary between the mafia and the American secret service, a collaboration that is seldom mentioned in accounts of this period of history. Enzo witnesses the invasion of Sicily by the American and British military and, as the war is drawing to a close, he decides to take matters into his own hands and make his way home.

Filled with rich, atmospheric imagery, this novel depicts life in Sicily prior to the Second World War, before Enzo and his cousins, as well as countless others of their generation, are drawn into a terrible conflict that transcends national borders, but which cannot take away their hope for peace and freedom.

The Interpreter is based on true events. Isabella Pallavicini tells the story of her father's experiences in the war using fictionalised people, places and actions.