Random Things Tours: Lucifer´s Game by Cristina Loggia

 

Rome 1942. While Cordelia Olivieri is desperately trying to escape Italy took over by Mussolini´s brown shirts, the German troops are allowed to use the country as their base for futher military actions towards the North of Africa and beyond. Cordelia´s hiding her Jewish identity and got caught into a very dangerous net of spies involving representatives of the Catholic Church from the Vatican´s neighbouring her hotel, a mysterious Lucifer working for the local ´brown´ police as well as British spies. 

Cristina Loggia´s debut novel Lucifer´s Game is set in Italy, not a too frequent setting for WWII historical fiction, as most of the books on this topic are either set in Germany or in France. Personally, I was also attracted about the idea of Cordelia´s Jewish identiy, as Italian Jews are a category rarely featured in fiction - as for now, my only references in this respect are Primo Levi´s Periodical Table and The Gardens of Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani. Cordelia´s mother was English and there are not clear and visible traces of her Jewishness - in her immediate environment or lifestyle of any kind.

As one cannot change historical circumstances and the role of a research-oriented work of fiction is to reveal new details and clarifiy the events, the writer of fiction can use the general known timeline to introduce micro-histories and individual stories. From the literary point of view, it helps to give a face to events while respecting their ´authenticity´ and ´historicity´. A story like Cordelia´s might have happened or not, but its authenticity is less relevant as long as it does not alter the content of the matrix. The author navigates very carefully through this complex net of events, handling the information properly. 

Thus, although the Vatican (and especially the Pope at the time) had a highly problematic (to keep it diplomatically, which I am not) - not fully acknowledged - responsibility towards Jews, there were individuals belonging to the Church hierarchy at different levels who were probably involved in underground individual activities against the Germans, Italian Brown shirts and aimed at protecting and saving the Jews. Those characters are mostly featured in Lucifer´s Game. Particularly interesting for the book is the double game and the ways in which it was played by the characters, with the determination of individuals facing extraordinary circumstances they chose to react to, abandoning, at least temporarily their existential confort.

Although it takes a bit of time to warm up into the story, at least the last 100 pages promise a breathless turn of events, dealing not only with expected course of facts but it includes also a short romance - forbidden, but which adds more dramatism, surprising the reader.

After reading the book, there are a lot of interesting questioning and reflection that may follow, particularly regarding motivations and human psychology during terrible distressing times. It is a captivating story recommended for anyone looking for some new takes on WWII spy stories with main - brave - human characters. 

Lucifer´s Game has as well enough material for a book club discussion, as allows a long debate not only about the general ´bad versus evil´ everyday struggle, but also regarding specific episodes and decisions the characters featured are taking.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the blog tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own