This was rather emotionally raw and at times a bit overly detailed account of Slovenia's national author's rather rough transition (serious language troubles & poverty) from Switzerland to Yugoslavia during WWII. It ends on a cliffhanger of the invasion of the area and so, there is no real conclusion (it's part of a series, something I hadn't realized). Kovacic writes well (as does the translator, Michael Biggins) and his story is an interesting insight on the inter-WW society of Yugoslavia and the European concerns around ethnicity and community. Readers would benefit from an general understanding of the non-German/British situations in inter-war Europe, a world of new national boundaries, as Aloyse, the narrator, is too young, too trapped in a linguistic limbo to guide the reader.