Antoinette Moat | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

It is a mystery how a man can be born, rush through life, get killed in battle and be virtually forgotten, only to have his story rescued from oblivion thanks to the miracle of the written word. Arthur Gallettis life-story, inextricably woven with that of his wife and family, ripples unexpectedly from the collection of letters, unfolds to a music of love, danger, war and death from a time not so long ago. Arthur Galletti was a man in many respects representative of his time, and so it is more remarkable that the book is ablaze with travel, romance and danger. Born in India in 1907, raised in Italy and educated in England, Galletti had by 1927 become a British Army officer whose dashing good looks would have allowed him to star alongside Cary Grant in a Gunga Din movie. Instead Galletti risked his life for real on the murderous North West Frontier of India, exploring remote corners of the Raj. Arthurs literary life began to unfold when from age five, he, Roberto four, Beatrice three and a baby were left for ten months in the care of nuns in the hills of India, and together with the mother superior of the convent, began a correspondence with their own mother living below in the heat of India. From then on his story unfolds. When he met Rachel in Peshawar his soldiers story took an unexpected literary turn. Galletti wrote and received hundreds of detailed, wonderfully expressed letters. Arthur Galletti was killed in action in 1943. Still deeply in love, he left behind an anguished wife, a son, and a small daughter who was unable to comprehend how her father died fighting in North Africa. For 60 years the story lay largely ignored, until that same daughter decided to investigate thattreasure trove of letters. There were two trunks full, lovingly preserved in the family home in Italy. When Antoinette Moat began reading the letters she not only came to know her father for the first time, but encountered in these carefully scripted pages all the great themes of life: love, hope, loss, grief