In this award-winning Italian novel, an unusual stranger convinces Gianni Orzan that his vision of his deceased father as a distant, cruel Fascist is in fact untrue and that instead his father had been a double agent for the KGB. *Starred Review* After being confronted by a strange man who seems to know an uncomfortable amount of information about his family, Gianni Orzean thinks the worst and escapes with his family to the countryside. Through the course of this novel, Orzan develops a relationship with this sinister man, and in doing so, strengthens his relationship with his recently deceased father (who Gianni never much liked). Gianni always knew his father to be a Fascist supporter and retired Italian army officer, often at odds with his left-wing son. What Gianni is told by this strange visitor, however, is that his father was really a KGB spy, carrying out his mission to infiltrate Italian fascism and the army. As Gianni struggles with whether to accept these stories as fact or fiction, and struggles to reconcile his relationship with his father, he also confronts some startling developments in his own family. Veronesi is a master storyteller who keeps his readers breathless until the very end. He captures a man's midlife reexamination of the relationship with his father perfectly, and without cliche--a nearly impossible feat. Michael Spinella Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Sandro Veronesi was born in Prato, Italy, in 1959. The Force of the Past , is his first to be published in America. He lives in Rome, Italy.