Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman

In January 1943, a heavily pregnant woman resides alone in Rome, having left her family and all that is known to her behind in Germany.  Little more than nine months into her marriage, her German husband Gert joined the North Africa Campaign and on his advice, she journeyed to Rome to await his return.

Unaccustomed to the Italian way of life, culture or language, the woman finds solace in observing life around her. Her innocent gaze meanders around the city's monuments and architecture, soothing her mind but also deepening her solitude as she laments her husband's absence.

Delius' text takes much inspiration from his poems both in rhythm and description, delightfully and unassumingly drawing the reader into this 125 page-long sentence. The style lends itself well to the text, capably mirroring the woman's ongoing thought process and inner turmoil much like a soliloquy, were it not in the third person.

Yet at no point does the narrative voice interfere: the woman's thoughts about the war effort and the culture of the Third Reich are undoubtedly her own. At once insightful and convincing, the text does much to encapsulate the mood of this period and of the German public.