Narrative
The Sergeant in the Snow
Il sergente nella neve
Mario Rigoni Stern · 1953
Synopsis
Winter 1942, on the Don front. The sergeant major of a machine-gun company of Alpine troops holds a strongpoint with his men facing the Russian lines, under fire from snipers, in the cold and in want. Then a Russian offensive breaks through the front, the order to withdraw arrives, and the column abandons its positions for a long march, in January 1943, across the snow-covered steppe.
Context
The book appeared in 1953 from Einaudi, in the I Gettoni series edited by Elio Vittorini, with the subtitle “Memories of the Russian Retreat”. Vittorini, bothered by the many regionalisms, demanded corrections and presented the author as a writer who was not one by vocation. The narrative is divided into two parts, the stronghold on the Don and then the retreat. Noël Calef translated it into French at Denoël in 1954, and Laura Brignon again at Gallmeister in 2025; Archibald Colquhoun translated it into English under the title “The Sergeant in the Snow”.
Who it is for
A short first-person narrative in which everything recounted happened to the one who speaks.
Prizes and reception
The book received the Viareggio prize for a first work; the Treccani calls it a little Anabasis.
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