Diary
Το πλατύ ποτάμι
Not translated into English
Yannis Beratis · 1946
Synopsis
March 1941, the mountains of Albania. A volunteer second lieutenant notes what he sees: the pack animals they are given, barely able to stand, the columns climbing by night, the gunfire, the men lying down with their faces in the earth. No one makes speeches there and no one is a hero.
Context
The book deals with the last weeks of the Albanian campaign, in March 1941. Its author was there, and the post he held explains his point of view: he commanded nothing, he spoke to the enemy. Chapters appeared in a review as early as 1942; a first part was printed in 1946, and the whole, enlarged, appeared in 1965. The author pays tribute there to the courage of the Jewish soldiers of the Greek army, as the Encyclopaedia Judaica has noted. There is no French edition.
Who it is for
A narrative never translated into French. It helps to know that Greece drove the Italians back in Albania during the winter of 1940 and that Germany intervened in April 1941.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most important prose text on the war of 1940, it received in 1965, in its complete edition, the first State Prize for the novel.