The Reprisal was published posthumously and represents the first translation of the works of Laudomia Bonanni, an Italian journalist and writer known in the aftermath of World War II for her realist fiction. An informative introduction describes the historical context and suggests that Bonanni drew from several sources of actual experience in constructing her novel, including her own time spent as a member of the Fascist Party and her eventual disillusionment with it. I am now highly curious about Bonanni and the influence of her own experiences on her writing, and hope that more of her work will be translated into English.

This novel recounts the story of a small group of Fascists who towards the end of World War II seek safety from retaliation in an abandoned mountain monastery in Italy. Little is revealed of the background or motivations of the group members, most of whom were residents of a small village who worked as farmers, a pig gelder, a shoemaker and a schoolteacher. The pre-adolescent Nirli, orphaned when his elderly father is killed in a fire that is blamed on partisans, follows his neighbor in joining the group.

The group accidentally comes across and takes as captive La Rossa, a pregnant female partisan, who seems fearless and taunts her captors continually. Through a kangaroo court process, the fascists declare La Rossa guilty of murder based on highly questionable evidence, but agree to delay her execution until she gives birth. They are subsequently joined by a young peasant seminarian, who remains at the monastery in order to minister to the captive woman. While several members struggle with the sentence they have imposed, it is Nirli, who has a close but ambivalent relationship with LaRossa, who ultimately determines her fate.

The story is told retrospectively by the unnamed schoolteacher, who many years later struggles with whether to reveal the events.

These facts have never been revealed. No one has ever breathed a word. Everything buried. Soon the last shoveful of dirt will drop, so to speak, since I, the last, am old. It’s incredible how once you’re in your seventies, you tumble toward your eighties. And for years I have been asking myself if I’m obliged to exhume those facts. If it would make any sense. Or come to any good. It is just a story like any other war story, and would be a lousy one at that if women and children hadn’t been involved. Women make for tragedy. And children are the lambs.

Set apart from the rest by his refusal to carry a gun, the schoolteacher is assigned to guarding La Rossa. Always observing and taking notes, he presents as detached and largely ignored by the others. The introduction to the book draws a parallel between the role of the schoolteacher as narrator and Bonanni herself, who was also a teacher during the war and describes the role of a writer as that of a “fearless spectator”.

Bonanni's writing is visually vivid, while having a simplicity of plot, setting and character portrayal that leaves much in the background unexplained. I felt this actually added to the power of her writing, as it made me feel immersed in a sense of being an outside observer, struggling to understand exactly what is happening and why. The structure of the narrative is also unusual, with each of ten chapters divided into six numbered sections of approximately equal length, inferred by the translators as being reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno: “With this method she gives her Inferno something of the rhythm of a collection of cantos.”