Summary
Olaf Olafsson: Restoration Written in the tradition of The English Patient and Redemption, this sumptuous story of love tested by the whirlwind of war is set in the beautiful regions of Tuscany, in the 1940s. In this compelling story of passion and betrayal, Olafsson once again weaves his endlessly insightful magic, creating a novel that grapples with the moral ambitions of war, while at the same time masterfully painting psychological portraits of those who survive it. Raised as a darling in a British family in Florence, Alice stunned everyone by marrying Claudio, a small landowner. UDespite objections from both sides of the family, the two found a dilapidated villa on the windswept Tuscan hills of San Martino and devoted themselves fully to their home and land - and what they built together bonded them. They had a son. They finished the house. They were happy. However, separated from her family and the life she was used to, Alice begins to sink into a great and suffocating loneliness. After many years of hard work, filling endless acres of land with orchards, livestock and workers, Alice's growing restlessness draws her back into the heady social vortex of wartime Rome and into a reckless affair that will have devastating consequences. Her thoughtlessness did not escape the observant eyes - the eyes of Robert Marshall, a prominent dealer in Renaissance paintings. In exchange for his silence, he asks to hide somewhere on the estate a priceless work by Caravaggio, a national treasure that he sold to the Germans. What she doesn't know, however, is the truth about a brilliant, prodigiously talented young artist named Christine, whom she shelters, who is capable of restoring any painting and whose secrets can destroy them all...
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