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The Fire and the Sea
Italy, 1919 – the Great War is over, but for some, victory has brought little peace. In the midst of territorial quarrels all over Europe, the disputed port city of Fiume is seized by an army of rebel Italian soldiers, demanding its annexation from Yugoslavia to Italy. They are led by the poet-soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seeks to paint on Fiume’s canvas his masterpiece of political action – a bold vision of the future wrought in the poetry of flesh and blood.
When the crew of their ship mutinies in support of the rebellion and sails for the city, Italian naval officers Achille and Vitale are dragged into a maelstrom of politics, art and violence, where monarchists and futurists, poets and prostitutes, pirates and priests compete to build a new world on the ruins of the old. In Fiume, the city of freedom, they will be confronted with the dark passions and unsettling desires that dwell within – that burn, like a great fire, in the city by the sea.
When the crew of their ship mutinies in support of the rebellion and sails for the city, Italian naval officers Achille and Vitale are dragged into a maelstrom of politics, art and violence, where monarchists and futurists, poets and prostitutes, pirates and priests compete to build a new world on the ruins of the old. In Fiume, the city of freedom, they will be confronted with the dark passions and unsettling desires that dwell within – that burn, like a great fire, in the city by the sea.
466 pages, Paperback
Published September 12, 2025
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October 24, 2025
Read this if you like: Pulp adventure and insane people
In 1919, the city of Rijeka, then known as Fiume, was taken over by Italy's favorite cokehead and a bunch of his psycopath friends. They proceeded to run the place as a personal fiefdom, throw a three-month-long party where the whole city was invited, replace the economy with piracy (skull and crossbones and all), and declare music the highest human good until the Italian government got their head out of their ass and kicked them all out. This all actually happened in real life.
This book attempts to explain what kind of mindset leads people to look at this retarded mess and say "yeah that sounds pretty cool", and it all comes down to the fact that the leadership was mostly artists, and artists make their trade by making people feel strongly. In the post-WW1 malaise, actual warlordism was a common hobby for youths who missed out on "the big one" and war veterans who weren't done yet. The reason was simple - life was cheap, emotions were high, the world was falling apart, and it seemed like all of society was going to be split between depth-grovelers and the new nobility of uberviolent ubermensch who purged themselves of doubt and fear and took whatever they wanted. Throw in a few world-class poets and suddenly you have a faction that straddles the line between "movement" and "rebel army".
It's not a story about people fooled by propaganda, but a common theme of Interwar stories not written from the perspective of one of the nations that won, that the new post-war world belonged to the monsters and potentially even that this was a positive development. The characters of this book express this by making it their end goal to die in a war for no good reason because growing old is lame and dying as a warrior is awesome. It's very viking in a way. Here it comes off as more Conan than anything, which is fine, Conan as a series is not as stupid as people assume.
I suspect that large portions of this book are creatively borrowed from the works of Yukio Mishima, and not because there's a Japanese guy who talks about what it means to have a good death, because again, that part is actually historically-accurate. That said, I'm a bit suspicious of high art translated from truly foreign languages like Japanese and this book was originally written in english.
I'm not sure what kind of person I could even recommend this book to except to go back to the Conan comparison and say that, if you wanted the original Robert E. Howard Conan to be more cerebral, this is probably going to scratch your itch. But I sure liked it.
In 1919, the city of Rijeka, then known as Fiume, was taken over by Italy's favorite cokehead and a bunch of his psycopath friends. They proceeded to run the place as a personal fiefdom, throw a three-month-long party where the whole city was invited, replace the economy with piracy (skull and crossbones and all), and declare music the highest human good until the Italian government got their head out of their ass and kicked them all out. This all actually happened in real life.
This book attempts to explain what kind of mindset leads people to look at this retarded mess and say "yeah that sounds pretty cool", and it all comes down to the fact that the leadership was mostly artists, and artists make their trade by making people feel strongly. In the post-WW1 malaise, actual warlordism was a common hobby for youths who missed out on "the big one" and war veterans who weren't done yet. The reason was simple - life was cheap, emotions were high, the world was falling apart, and it seemed like all of society was going to be split between depth-grovelers and the new nobility of uberviolent ubermensch who purged themselves of doubt and fear and took whatever they wanted. Throw in a few world-class poets and suddenly you have a faction that straddles the line between "movement" and "rebel army".
It's not a story about people fooled by propaganda, but a common theme of Interwar stories not written from the perspective of one of the nations that won, that the new post-war world belonged to the monsters and potentially even that this was a positive development. The characters of this book express this by making it their end goal to die in a war for no good reason because growing old is lame and dying as a warrior is awesome. It's very viking in a way. Here it comes off as more Conan than anything, which is fine, Conan as a series is not as stupid as people assume.
I suspect that large portions of this book are creatively borrowed from the works of Yukio Mishima, and not because there's a Japanese guy who talks about what it means to have a good death, because again, that part is actually historically-accurate. That said, I'm a bit suspicious of high art translated from truly foreign languages like Japanese and this book was originally written in english.
I'm not sure what kind of person I could even recommend this book to except to go back to the Conan comparison and say that, if you wanted the original Robert E. Howard Conan to be more cerebral, this is probably going to scratch your itch. But I sure liked it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review