Chinese Summary/中文概要：
A novel where History interwines with individual stories.
In the background, the tragic events of Italian war, the Siege of Montecassino.
A crucial war episode to describe five lifestories marked by the conflict.
Montecassino, 1944. The Allied have been trying for five months to break through Gustav Line. There are not just Americans and English, but also troops from far countries, thrown into ’Ciocaria’ by the whirlpool of WWII: Indians, Nepaleses and even a battallion of New Zeland’s Maoris.There are soldiers from Morocco, guilty of consistent rapes on women; the Polish, - former gulag deported who are fighting in a foreign country for Poland’s freedom. And even onethousand Jews, carrying with themselves Wojtek, the Teddy Bear, are part of this company and they take arms just for the sheer right to exist. And the civilians, with their sufferings, caught in a crossfire. Who were all these men forgotten by WWII history?
Helena Janeczekl tries to answer with simple stories full of warmth and empathy.
John Wilkins, a Texas soldier fallen in the bloodthirsty attempt to cross a river. Rapata Sullivan, the grand-son of a shortly-died veteran of the Maoris battallion, attending the celebrations of the battleat his grand’father’s place.Edoardo Bielinski and Anand Gupta, two friends who grew up in Rome and go to Cassino just for ’spirit of adventure’ while they are wondering what’s going to happen to them once their High School is over. And Rachida, an immigrant from Morocco working as maid for an old Italian couple. A novel spreading its glance from Ciociaria over distant world portions, making them closer to us and showing us that, as long as our past is still alive in the survivors’s souls, the past is not at all past. It’s still here.