"It is a sultry August at the very end of the twentieth century, and Tristano is dying. A hero of the Italian Resistance, Tristano has called a writer to his bedside to listen to his life story, though, really, 'you don't tell a life... you live a life, and whole you're living it, it's already lost, has slipped away.' Tristano Dies, one of Antonio Tabucchi's major novels, is a vibrant consideration of love, war, devotion, betrayal, and the instability of the past, of storytelling, and what it means to be a hero."--