> Skip to content
  • Published: 2 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241342336
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

The Girl on the Via Flaminia




A dark love story set in wartime Rome from the author of In Love and Your Face for the World to See

Rome, December 1944. The city has been liberated by the Allies, but no one feels like celebrating. A bitter wind blows down Via Flaminia, where Signora Adela Pulcini keeps her boarding house and discreetly finds Italian girls for lonely America soldiers. Robert is one such soldier; Lisa is the girl procured to keep him company in return for food and shelter. But the simple exchange doesn't go to plan, as Robert and Lisa find themselves tangled in a dark, mutually destructive affair. Exposing the fault lines between men and women, the old and new worlds, and victor and vanquished, Hayes's spare, taut novel is an incisive portrayal of sexual economics and the dark side of love.

  • Published: 2 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241342336
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

Also by Alfred Hayes

See all

Praise for The Girl on the Via Flaminia

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

Kirkus Reviews

It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world

The New York Times

A sensitive and gorgeously wrought study of connections and misconnections, this masterpiece of the period perfectly captures a short, but unique, period in history

Mostly Fiction

Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences

Guardian