The Secret of Santa Vittoria: A Novel

by Robert Crichton

Overview

The #1 New York Times–bestselling novel of an Italian town banding together against Nazis occupation—"irresistibly engaging . . . bubbles with gaiety and wit" (The New York Times).
In the last days of World War II, German forces are sent to occupy the Italian hill town of Santa Vittoria. Above all, they wish to claim its great treasure: one million bottles of the Santa Vittoria wine that is its lifeblood. As the provincial mayor matches wits with the urbane German captain, the town unites—aristocrats and peasants, old enemies and young lovers—to deceive the Germans and save its wine.
When the wine suddenly disappears, its hidden location becomes the closely held secret of Santa Vittoria. Robert Crichton brings this tale to life with wit, heart, and suspense in his masterful classic. First published in 1966, The Secret of Santa Vittoria was on the New York Times bestseller list for fifty weeks—eighteen weeks as #1—and became an international bestseller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466851085
Publisher:	Sarah Crichton Books
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	469
File size:	981 KB

About the Author

Robert Crichton (1925-1993) was a novelist and magazine writer. Born in New Mexico, Crichton spent most of his life in New York after serving in the Army during World War II in the Battle of the Bulge and graduating from Harvard in 1951. Crichton's first book, The Great Impostor (1960), told the true story of Fred Demara, an impostor who successfully assumed scores of guises including that of a Trappist monk, Texas prison warden and surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy. The bestselling book was adapted into a 1961 movie starring Tony Curtis. A follow-up, The Rascal and the Road, was a memoir about Crichton's adventures with Demara.
Crichton's first novel was The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1966). Set in an Italian hilltown during World War II, The Secret of Santa Vittoria was the rollicking tale of the town's attempts to hide a million bottles of wine from German occupiers. It occupied the New York Times bestseller list for 50 weeks, became an international bestseller, and was adapted into a Golden Globe-winning film starring Anthony Quinn. Crichton's second novel, The Camerons, was published in 1972. This sweeping family saga, focusing on a 19th century Scottish family's struggle to rise above the grinding poverty of the coal miner's life, was based upon Robert Crichton's own Scottish forebears. The Camerons was on the New York Times bestseller list for over five months, and became a BBC miniseries.
At the time of his death in 1993, Robert Crichton was at work on a memoir of his time in the army which he had tentatively, and with characteristic self-deprecation, entitled Memoirs of a Bad Soldier.
Robert Crichton's father, Kyle Crichton, was a writer and editor at Collier's magazine and author of novels and biographies, including a biography of the Marx Brothers. Kyle Crichton also wrote a column for The New Masses, a Marxist weekly, under the name Robert Forsythe. Robert Crichton's wife, Judy Crichton, was an Emmy Award-winning documentary writer, director and producer, and author of America 1900: The Turning Point.