English language version now available for free from the Wu Ming Foundation:
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/Wu_Ming_Manituana_EN.pdf

There was no room for the past in America.

There is an irony in that statement, rhetorical as it might be. It is exactly the surfeit of room which allows so much of America to malinger and multiply, to prosper and fester in equal parts. This is an epic book but it is a soft 5 on the GR scale. This is a collection of silences, omissions and unplayed notes: it is a Kind of Blue for the Vollmann set.

They ran to save a clutch of souls from the Apocalypse. They ran, because it was written thus. Time was ending, and everything was reaching its conclusion.

(perhaps Sweet Reader one should fashion a list of the novelistic histories, the Seven or so Dreams of our Rabelaisian erudition)

Wu Ming have collectively penned a tale of Destiny -- and Despair. It is the American War of Independence from the perspective of the Native Americans in league with the Loyalists. The novel was published originally in Italian in 2007 and it bears the acerbic awareness of those weary years of Mission Accomplished and the Dick Cheney Rule of International Law. There is even a minor character named Rumsfeld. It doesn't require explanation but this text weeps for loss, the narrative rests and rolls on those salty, muddy tears. Manituana shines when the focus shifts to London and an audience with (mad) King George. The narrative then returns to the New World and its manufacture of hope. There history is reaped in brazen prose. The only complaint is the dearth. This novel should have been twice its length. ( )

Déluges des violences et d'aspirations trahies... Les oubliées guerres indiennes ressemblent aux guerres européennes, des enchevêtrements d'alliances qui ne finissent que dans la destruction... ( )

Libro ambizioso questo. Nella struttura, corale e ampia. Nella scrittura densa, che alterna all’azione, che pure c’è, e tanta, minuziose descrizioni e digressioni a volta oniriche, a volte erudite. Nel dettagliato lavoro di documentazione che si rivela nei paesaggi, nei costumi, nei riti con una cura quasi salgariana. E difatti è al romanzo ottocentesco che l’opera fa pensare in tutti questi suoi aspetti. Di fronte a ciò appare più scontata la ‘storia raccontata dalla parte sbagliata’, in quello che è un western settecentesco raccontato dagli indiani, cioè dai perdenti predestinati. C’è un filo di antiamericanismo in tutto ciò – la guerra di Secessione vista come primo vagito dell’incontrollata fame di terre propria del diciannovesimo secolo statunitense e delle tentazioni egemoniche del ventesimo ma il racconto è per lunghi tratti appassionante, anche se il finale è bene o male scritto e questo procura un calo di tensione nel corso delle ultime cento, centocinquanta pagine. Bello l’aspetto sognante della spiritualità indiana, anche se alla fine, forse, la parte che resta più nel ricordo è la sezione londinese del racconto, con il pirotecnico linguaggio di strada dei Mohock londinesi. ( )

An enlightening book about the painful birth of the United States of America, told mostly from the perspective of the losers - the white settlers and native Americans who were not on the side of republicans, and whose story is hard and often hidden. Shifting from the sacred lands of the Americans, to the teeming streets of Georgian London and back again to the realities of hard fought battle, this is thought provoking and painful - we learn to love characters who we know are history's losers.