The interview was published in translation in Italy in December of Here are the questions and answers in the original English version:. For many decades, in North Americas the story of the second world war focused on the fight against Nazi Germany on the western side of Europe, and to a certain extent North Africa. I grew up with films and television programs about Americans in combat, Britain under the Blitz, the Canadians in the Netherlands and in Italy, especially at Monte Casino, as well as stories of French resistance.
And the war continued there, underground, for over another half dozen years until local armed resistance was crushed. I knew about this story for all of my adult life, and I knew about the partisan resistance as well but I needed to reach a point in my writing life where I felt I could manage to tell this story, and I needed to wait for a time in history when the story could be received in the west.
But that has changed, and more recently interest has been amplified since the war between Russia and Ukraine. The zeitgeist now permits us to look again at the stories that were not told in the past. Every beach is vast, but the universe is contained in every grain of sand on that beach, so I go looking for universal humanity in that tiny grain of sand.
The smaller the stage, the greater the drama. The story of war is on one hand grand, but on the other hand very personal; on one hand perpetually unchanging in history as men go to war and women weep, and on the other hand particular in different places. The detail of a particular place and time awakens in me awareness of the deeper universality of the human condition.
My novel set in Lithuania is a form of imaginary autobiography. My eldest brother was born in Lithuania in When my parents fled in , they thought they were departing for a short time and would have left my brother behind if his grandmother had not been away. Many other parents did this, and ended up with children left behind, children who could not get out of the Soviet Union for many, many years.
