In the Wolf’s Mouth

Set in North Africa and Sicily at the end of the last war, In the Wolf’s Mouth follows the Allies’ botched ‘liberation’ attempts as they chase the Germans north towards the Italian mainland.

Focusing on the campaigns of two young soldiers ? Will Walker, an English Field Security Officer, ambitious to master and shape events, and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian-American infantryman ? the audiobook contains some of the best battle writing of the past fifty years. Particularly eloquent on the brutish, blundering inaccuracy of war, this is a sensual, intimate experience, the immediacy of the prose uncanny and unforgettable.

The audiobook opens with the stories of two Sicilians ? Angilu, a young shepherd, caught up in corruption, and Ciro Albanese, a local Mafioso ? and we meet the same two men in the terrifying final chapters, making it clear that the Mafia were there before and are there still; the slaughter of war only a temporary distraction.