The match of death. Bortolotti N.

The book of the Italian author of Nicoletta Bortolotti takes place in Kyiv, captured by the Nazi troops. Her heroine Sasha is the daughter of a football player and herself is in love with football. It is difficult and dangerous to live in an occupied city: people are arrested and killed, many are starving. But the Nazis are trying to create the illusion of a “normal” life in which there is even a place for sports. Sashin father and his comrades should play a match with the German team, and perhaps they will have to pay their lives for victory or defeat.

The plot was based on the legend of the “deadly” match between local football players and the Nazi team. The author does not dispute the legend and does not argue with the truth, but simply shows that the whole life of people during the war was a kind of “match of death”, an endless game of survival. For the novel "Match of Death", Nicoletta Bortolotti was awarded several prizes.