An Italian-Jewish memoir.

For Solo Violin: A Jewish Childhood in Fascist Italy, by Aldo Zargani, translated by Marina Harrs. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002, 326 pp., $15.95 US/ $23.95 Canada.

Aldo Zargani, who was born in 1933 in Turin and lives and writes in Rome, has created a work representing a brilliant literary debut, in which he reconstructs the lost world of his Jewish childhood in Fascist Italy during the years 1938-1945. He takes us to a corner of his life that was unusually intense, framed by unique events. His memoir, securing its strength from its public context, catching a dist