Malcolm Gaskill The Glass Mountain : Escape & Discovery in Wartime Italy Multicolor

The bestselling author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey into his familys wartime pastIn this rich, engrossing book, Gaskill succeeds in his aim of writing a story that in good conscience feels real... As I finished his book, I began to see my own familys past through his glass mountain Ian Ellison, Literary Review Gaskills account is as much about what cannot be known about the past as what can still be reconstructed, even as the last witnesses to the Second World War pass from sight... his ability to explore the overgrown byways of history almost as a form of travel writing is again winningly on show here James Owen, The Sunday Times Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his greatuncle Ralphs wartime adventures hed been a prisoner in Italy, and hed cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, hed faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set Gaskill on his uncles trail...What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From lastditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisonerofwar camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian Alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a longforgotten episode of the Second World War. Yet... Malcolm Gaskill The Glass Mountain : Escape & Discovery in Wartime Italy