The Mill on the Po
The Mill on the Po, trilogy of novels by Riccardo Bacchelli, first published in Italian as Il mulino del Po in 1938–40. The work, considered Bacchelli’s masterpiece, dramatizes the conflicts and struggles of several generations of a family of millers. The first two volumes, Dio ti salve (1938; “God Bless You”) and La miseria viene in barca (1939; “Misery Comes to a Boat”), were published in English as The Mill on the Po; the third volume, Mondo vecchio sempre nuovo (1940), as Nothing New Under the Sun.
The first volume covers the period from 1812 to 1848. The second stresses the terrible economic and social effect on the disadvantaged of the 19th-century Italian struggle for political unity. The third ends with the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in World War I.