In my search for WWI novels I hadn't already read, I found this new Italian author, and his micro-study of a single occupied village in 1917 Italy, focusing on the ways in which an eccentric aristocratic family copes with the occupation of their lands and the mistreatment of their villagers by the Austrian Army. The central figure is a precocious young boy, whose willingness to be roped into poorly judged espionage activities and whose misreading of situations endangers everyone, makes this both more tense, but also less believable and slightly annoying.