The jacket is rubbed, has loss at the tail and is chippd at the edges. The front end paper has two blobby stains towards the tail, which could be coffee and the pages are tanned. Overall a clean and solid copy. Originally published in 1958 as Le Caillou Blanc and translated by Elizabeth Sutherland and Vera Bleuer. First American edition. This is google's translation of the Italian Wikipedia page "As a kid Coccioli followed his official father in Libya , Tripoli and Cirenaica . Benghazi spent childhood and adolescence. Then he returned to Italy to study, first in Rijeka and then, at the beginning of the Second World War , in Tuscany with his mother. Invited to the weapons, after September 8, 1943 he joined the first partisan formations on the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines . Taken by the Germans, he escaped from the Prison of Bologna , an episode that ended with a medal for merit." (Smug smiley face) :"This is the story of what happened to Ardito during World War II. As the book opens, he has just lost his faith because he prayed to God that he be executed to save local peasant youths who have been caught sabotaging a railroad, only to have a German officer pardon the youths without executing Ardito. In somewhat confused thinking, typical perhaps of Coccioli, the Nazi officer has negated Ardito's faith in God by being the one, rather than God, who has done the pardoning. Sent north to a prison camp in Germany, Ardito meets a second priest, Augustin Nevers, who has lost his faith because he is gay, another familiar theme of the author, who is himself gay." (Robert A. Parker)