Olivia Manning, Βαλκανική Τριλογία, το οποίο είναι αυτοβιογραφικό μιας και η συγγραφέας έζησε από κοντά όσα αφηγείται, ως σύζυγος μέλους του Βρετανικού Συμβουλίου στο Βουκουρέστι και μετά στην Ελλάδα. Η Manning περιγράφει την ζωή της σε σχέση με την ταχεία μεταστροφή της Συμμαχικής Ρουμανίας σε μέλος του Άξονα και πως αυτό επέδρασε και στη δική της ζωή.

Because at first food is everywhere in Bucharest—and food and hunger (physical and emotional) are central motifs that run through the trilogy. Manning's books have received limited critical attention; as during her life, opinions are divided, particularly about her characterisation and portrayal of other cultures. Her works tend to minimise issues of gender and are not easily classified as feminist literature. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has highlighted Manning's importance as a woman writer of war fiction and of the British Empire in decline. Her works are critical of war and racism, and colonialism and imperialism; they examine themes of displacement and physical and emotional alienation.

Bourke, Angela, ed. (2002), "Olivia Manning", The Field day anthology of Irish writing: Irish women's writing and traditions, vol.V, New York University Press, pp.1044–45, ISBN 978-0-8147-9908-6 Burgess, writing in The Sunday Times, quoted (for example) in the preface of Penguin's 1981 edition of The Balkan Trilogy Lassner, Phyllis (1998), British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of Their Own, Basingstoke: Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-333-72195-7, OCLC 231719380 .

Fortunes is unashamedly autobiographical, a creative reconstruction of actual people and events, with the fictionalized emotional battleground of Manning’s marriage to the ebullient Reggie Smith mirroring the wider conflict. Manning spent her days writing; her main project was a book about Henry Morton Stanley and his search for Emin Pasha, [47] but she also maintained an intimate correspondence with Stevie Smith, which was full of Bloomsbury gossip and intrigue. [29] [37] She undertook a dangerous journalistic assignment to interview the former Romanian Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu in Cluj, Transylvania, at the time full of German troops, [48] and soon to be transferred by Romania to Hungary as part of the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, imposed by the Germans and Italians. [39] [49] Like many of her experiences, the interview was to be incorporated into a future work; others included her impromptu baptism of Smith with cold tea because she feared being separated from him after death, and Smith's production of a Shakespeare play, in which she was promised a prime role that was given to another. [50]This is unjust. Fortunes is a triumph, fusing fiction with diligently researched fact to portray a disparate group of expatriates surviving under threat of invasion: their stoicism, heroism and cowardice; their fleeting romances and petty intrigues. The prose is economical and the gaze sceptical and unsentimental. Added to this tapestry is a rich evocation of contemporary society, place and manners. Anthony Burgess called the sequence the ‘finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer’. Rossen, Janice (2003), Women writing modern fiction: a passion for ideas, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p.28, ISBN 0-333-61420-8

The book did show me how good I am at speed reading and also how much there is to know about British adultery.... Remarkable Expedition: The Story of Stanley's Rescue of Emin Pasha from Equatorial Africa ( The Reluctant Rescue in the US) (UK: 1947, 1991; US: 1947, 1985) The Balkan Trilogy is the story of a marriage and of a war, a vast, teeming, and complex masterpiece in which Olivia Manning brings the uncertainty and adventure of civilian existence under political and military siege to vibrant life. Manning’s focus is not the battlefield but the café and kitchen, the bedroom and street, the fabric of the everyday world that has been irrevocably changed by war, yet remains unchanged. Steinberg, Theodore L. (2005), Twentieth-Century Epic Novels, Newark: University of Delaware Press, ISBN 978-0-87413-889-4, OCLC 230671138 . One of those combinations of soap opera and literature that are so rare you'd think it would meet the conditions of two kinds of audiences: those after what the trade calls 'a good read,' and those who want something more.Klein, a Jewish economist refugee. He has found temporary employment as an advisor to the Romanian government and is a source of news of its intrigues. a b c d e f g h i j Salmon, Mary (Autumn 1986), "Nowhere to Belong the Fiction of Olivia Manning", The Linen Hall Review, 3 (3): 11–13, JSTOR 20533820 Manning was deeply affected by the sudden death in 1977 of Jerry Slattery, her lover and confidant for more than a quarter of a century. [153] Manning's last years were also made difficult by physical deterioration; arthritis increasingly affected her, [154] leading to hip replacements in 1976 and in 1979 and she suffered poor health related to amoebic dysentery caught in the Middle East. [155] Manning began work on the final novel in The Levant Trilogy, The Sum of Things, in which Harriet agrees to sail home to the UK, but having said goodbye to Guy, changes her mind. The novel describes Harriet's travels in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, observes Guy's supposed widowerhood in Cairo after he hears of the sinking of Harriet's ship, and follows Simon Boulderstone's injury during the battle of El Alamein and recovery. [156]

Were this just the portrait of a marriage, it would be wearisome—the Pringles finish the sequence of novels in no healthier a state than they start them. Yet the story also provides a meticulous account of war from a non-combatant’s point of view. What interests Manning, in critic Harry J. Mooney’s words, is “the chaos” that such large events “impose on private life.” Throughout, escalating fear and mayhem slowly tighten their grip around the characters, although few really understand what is happening to them. Reality is glimpsed through gossip in the English bar of the Athenee Palace (a hotel which still stands, albeit now as a Hilton), the changing tone of the news-films at the cinema, and the jokes which could be made yesterday but are perilous to tell today. a b c d Macintyre, Ben; Pavia, Will (3 March 2007), "The bumbling British hero who was a Communist 'spy' ", The TimesThe approaching war and rise of fascism and the Iron Guard in Romania disconcerted and frightened Manning. [42] The abdication of King Carol and the advance of the Germans in September 1940 increased her fears, and she repeatedly asked Smith "But where will the Jews go?" Just before German troops entered Romania on 7 October at the invitation of the new dictator Ion Antonescu, Manning flew to Greece, followed a week later by Smith. [53] Greece and Egypt [ edit ] Refugees crop up again and again in this book. In a passage that will strike a chord with many displaced Ukrainians (and departing anti-Putin Russians too), we meet a dispossessed and distraught baron from Bessarabia who is now a changed man: “I have lost everything. But everything! My estate, my house … my silver, my Meissen ornaments. … You cannot imagine, so much I have lost.” He breaks down in tears: “I have even lost my little dog.” Theodore Steinberg argues for the Fortunes of War to be seen as an epic novel, noting its broad scope and the large cast of interesting characters set at a pivotal point of history. As with other epic novels, the books examine intertwined personal and national themes. There are frequent references to the Fall of Troy, including Guy Pringle's production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in which British expatriates play themselves while Romania and Europe mirror the doomed Troy. [173] [178] [179] In Steinberg's perspective, the books also challenge the typically male genre conventions of the epic novel by viewing the war principally through the eyes of a female character "who frequently contrasts her perceptions with those of the men who surround her". [178] In contrast, Adam Piette views the novel sequence as a failed epic, the product of a Cold War desire to repress change as illustrated by "Harriet's self-pityingly dogged focus on their marriage" without dealing with the radicalism of the war, and fate of its victims as represented by Guy and his political engagement. [180] Other works [ edit ]