"Il Calderas" by Carlo Sgorlon (Oscar Mondadori, 1987)

I liked the start, the world seen only from the inside of a gipsy cavaran. The end became too much of a fairy tale, the sort Sindel complained about earlier. Some episodes (the period of his imprisonment) are unconvincing. Others (his capture by the Germans) are - unexpectedly - not described at all. At times I was reminded of The Grapes of Wrath in its attempt to dramatically document part of the history of the poor. At other times For Whom the Bell Tolls came to mind, with its depiction of illiterates through the eyes of an intelligent 'outsider'. But in some ways the fact that Sindel is such an outsider reduces the sense of experiencing gipsy culture, and his withdrawn nature means that there's little of the cinematic description or real-time action that Hemingway provides.