This title is shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award & the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Julia Blackburn & her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village & they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system & owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had
- even a pretty wife or daughter of the eruption of the Second World War of the conflict between the fascists & the partisans of death & fear & hunger of how they hid like foxes in the mountains. Write it down for us they said because otherwise it will all be lost. Thin Paths" is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places & a celebration of the humour & determination of the human spirit."