The Bridge at Locri

It’s 1963 and a group of young pacifists have signed up to change the world, volunteering to build a small road bridge for a community near Locri, a town in Calabria, southern Italy.These disparate characters begin as comrades working for a common cause, yet their ideals are tested in arguments over the collective good versus the rights of the individual, while personal desires quickly create further schism. The touch paper is lit when one of the volunteers, Italian heiress Isabella, who has affairs with two members of the group, disappears in an area notorious for the presence of the ’Ndrangheta mafia. Instead of murder or kidnapping for ransom could there be a much simpler explanation? The Bridge at Locri is, on one level, a mystery novel, in which the mystery is approached from the different perspectives of six narrators. On another, it’s a book which spans sixty years and charts the stories of the principal characters who, after Locri, go back to their own countries, with the missing but ever-present Isabella looming over all their lives. This elegant page-turning novel draws you into a wider view, offering a panorama of six decades of our history brought to us by the voices of intelligent, passionate and flawed characters from different corners of the world: Bosnia, East Germany, Colombia, Australia, Italy, Malawi and England.

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