From the literary point of view, it helps to give a face to events while respecting their ´authenticity´ and ´historicity´. 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.Īs 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. 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 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.Ĭristina 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.

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.

Lucifer's Game by Cristina Loggia