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"This volume focuses on acts of courage, defiance, and sacrifice undertaken during World War I and II by individuals that mainstream history has relegated to the sidelines. Drawn from different genres - literary, cinematic, diaristic and historical - the experiences that these 'outsiders' confronted lay bare the intimate, if lacerating, choices that they faced in their struggle for freedom. Ignored by official history, the testimonials that war prisoners, female partisan leaders, spies, deserters, and disillusioned soldiers offer, provide a fresh insight into the social, political, historical, and ethical contradictions that define warfare rhetoric in the twentieth century. The book's ten contributors delve into the conflicts between oppressive authorities and the desire for freedom. With verve and energy, they revive these largely neglected voices and turn them into a provocative medium to discuss, and redefine, issues still relevant today: heroism, pacifism, national pride, gender issues, faith, personal and collective history"-- Introduction : voices from the Sidelines -- Tabucchi and the antihero : figures for a historical, existential and symbolic resistance / Veronica Frigeni -- The Foibe war narrative : the new antiheroes of the 'second republic' / Louise Zamparutti -- Margherita Marchione as antihero for Italian Jews: a complex message of hope / Lisa Vitale -- Unfit for war : stories of desertion in Italian fiction; Dessì and Pellegrini / Luigi Gussago -- "Non credo più alla Patria, all'eroismo, alle Sante Cause ...": the journal of Donato Guglielmi, POW in Russia during WW2 / Gianluca Cinelli -- Partisan diary : Ada's Wars / Pina Palma -- Notturno and the war : D'Annunzio's intimate reflection on heroism / Michela Barisonzi -- Everyday heroes : Italian identity, moral dilemmas, and nonviolence in a late antifascist resistance novel by Antonio Barolini / Andrea Sartori -- An antihero in command : Soffici under the orders of Captain Punzi / Enrico Riccardo Orlando -- Between epic and anti-epic : observations on Italian Literature of the Great War / Tancredi Artico.
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