A private matter

Fenoglio's last work, the short «partisan novel» entitled A Private Matter, was published in April of 1963, two months after the author's death. Had he been alive, Fenoglio would have been happy to witness the enthusiasm which greeted the publication of his book. Among those who read the novel and praised it most highly we find Italo Calvino: «And it was the most solitary of us who succeeded in writing the novel we all wanted to write about the war (...) Only now thanks to Fenoglio, we can say that a season was completed, and only now we are certain that it really existed: the season that goes from Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947) to Una questione privata (1963).»