To the beginning of the horrors yet harmless, almost like a game. In the old Church, in the she has with other children, hiding, climbing the tall Nadja to the window to get a better look. Lightning make the sky red glow from the distant dull hum across roars. And then the planes appear, “so many that they are hidden like a giant swarm of insects in the sky”. You always come closer and let “black eggs to the earth, falling down”. The eggs are bombs. A hits the sacristy, the Explosion hurls the observer on the ground. A girl, whose name Nadja does not know, dies. This is not something like a double death? The girl is no longer alive, and Nadja can’t even remember his name.
On the run
The scene takes place in the fortress, a Russian town on lake Ladoga, in which the German invaders close in September 1941, the siege ring around Leningrad. “Lost in the ice and snow” is the name of the novel by the Italian author Davide Morosinotto, tells of the beginning of the war from the perspective of young twins. Nadja and Viktor Danilov, 13 years old, in different trains, as they are evacuated with hundreds of other children from the threatened city. Viktor arrives in a collective farm on the edge of the Urals. Nadja creates it only to key castle. They are separated by two thousand kilometers from each other, and put everything back together. As they succeed, the power from the adventure story to a fast and furious Thriller.
“Winter is coming and with the Winter the enemy is coming. He sweeps everything away. Everything is destroyed,“ noted Nadja, as it is located in a nearly hopeless Situation. But remember: don’t give up. “I’m still alive,” she writes. “I’ll be waiting under the blanket of Snow, as the embers glow under a thin layer of ash.” The book is structured as a documentary, in which the two main characters take turns to report in diary entries of their experiences. Be added to the records of photographs, maps, sketches, newspaper articles and even a glued-in flower.
Under a suspicion of espionage
At the edge of the page zeternde notes again and again; “This is unpatriotic!”, “Defeatism!”. They come from a secret service Colonel, the Notebooks have fallen into the hands and against the children. On her Odyssey, the twins are in breach of many laws. They resist commands, steal food, use weapons, and raise arms vehicles, in order to survive. Viktor device in a prison camp and flees with political prisoners through a Tunnel. Nadja hides a Wehrmacht soldier, whom she has captured. The Colonel keeps the children for spies.
“comrade Stalin is the father of the Nation, the light that shines to us in difficult times,” Viktor initially sure. His journey through the real-socialist reality, when he encounters inefficiency and corruption of any kind, makes the glowing young pioneer and a skeptic. Nadja keeps the communism is a good idea, but doubts to the implementation. However, as in the fortress of Oreshek on an island in the Neva river, where a few soldiers of the red army to defy the onslaught of the “fucking Fascist bastards”, the red Flag is hoisted, it is proud of: “The red Flag fluttering, and reminded by your movements of a beating heart.”
grandfather as inspiration
Morosinotto, who was nominated for his novel “The Mississippi band” for the German youth literature prize, writes close to the historical facts along. His grandfather had fought with the Italian expedition corps in Russia. The war stories were the impetus for the impressive book. More than a Million Russians died in the siege of Leningrad, the majority of which were civilians. You “Lost in the ice and snow” is a monument. The message is: never again.
Davide Morosinotto: “Lost in the ice and snow. The incredible story of the siblings Danilov.” From the Italian by Cornelia Panzacchi. Thienemann, Stuttgart, 2018. 440 pages, 18 €. From The Age Of 12.
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