The nine stories which make up The Last Thing range from the prewar rise of fascism and its dangers for the Jewish community, through the concentration camps and the partisan fight against the Germans, concluding with a devastating summation of all that had been lost and destroyed in the war. Lahola writes masterfully outside of conventional tropes, exploring moral ambivalences where others work comfortably within the simple opposition of good versus evil. He punctures the standard historical image of the partisan fighters by depicting their heroism alongside their cruelty and pettiness, while also showing how often bravery and madness, kindness and stupidity can coexist. Lahola has written a sequence of World War II stories whose translation will offer not only a compelling read, but starkly new perspectives on the tragedy and grandeur of that momentous time in history. The publication includes an afterword by Peter Darovec.
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