Vaporetto: a Venetian public waterbus
Viale: an avenue or boulevard
Vin brulè: the Italian term for mulled wine; distinct from the French vin brûlé
Zaeti: a Venetian cookie, typically made with cornmeal and raisins and formed in a diamond shape
Zio/Zia: the Italian terms for uncle and aunt
Zoccoli: wooden clogs, usually homemade; often made with a wooden sole and a vamp of leather or canvas
Read On
Suggestions for Further Reading
As a full bibliography would stretch to many pages, I offer instead a brief selection of works for readers who are interested in learning more about the historical backdrop to Our Darkest Night. A few titles are now out of print, but they should be accessible via your local public library or any bookshop that specializes in hard-to-find titles. I have included general histories of the period, specialist works, memoirs and personal accounts, works of fiction, several websites, and one documentary film.
General and specialist histories:
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 by Rick Atkinson
The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman
Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees
The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution by Michele Sarfatti
Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism by Alexander Stille
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann
Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 by Joshua D. Zimmerman
The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival by Susan Zuccotti
Memoirs and first-person accounts:
Beyond Imagination by Victoria Ancona-Vincent
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
If This Is a Man (also published as Survival in Auschwitz) by Primo Levi
La memoria rende liberi: La vita interrotta di una bambina nella Shoah by Liliana Segre and Enrico Mentana
This Has Happened by Piera Sonnino
Night by Elie Wiesel
Fiction:
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen
From Sand and Ash by Amy Harmon
A Thread of Grace by Maria Doria Russell
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Websites:
Memoriale della Shoah di Milano: http://www.memorialeshoah.it
Museo Ebraico di Venezia: http://www.museoebraico.it
USC Shoah Foundation: https://sfi.usc.edu
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center at Yad Vashem: https://www.yadvashem.org
The documentary film Memoria, which features ninety interviews with Italian survivors of the Holocaust, among them Liliana Segre, is posted to the Fondazione CDEC’s YouTube channel. The film is in Italian with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_RBlqfvGlk
Also by Jennifer Robson
The Gown
Goodnight from London
Moonlight Over Paris
After the War is Over
Somewhere in France
Fall of Poppies
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
OUR DARKEST NIGHT. Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Robson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (couple); © Ilona Ivanova/Alamy Stock Photo (mountains); © IWM/Getty Images (plane); © Ricardo Reitmeyer/Shutterstock (sky); © Anna Kepa/Shutterstock (field)
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-267498-2
Version 10292020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267497-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-305940-5 (library edition)
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-306043-2 (international edition)
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Our Darkest Night Page 30
