A personal matter It is a short novel that offers the reader an intense picture of what the partisan resistance was like for Beppe Fenoglio (Alba, 1922 – Turin, 1963): a time of hypocrisy and contradictions, but also of genuine humanity. Drawing on his own experience as a partisan, Fenoglio also updates the narrative of the civil war in the Langhe region of Piedmont, an important theme in the literature of other Italians such as Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino.