The Light In The Ruins

The Light in the Ruins is a historical novel by Chris Bohjalian. First published in 2013 by Doubleday, the book tells the story of a young Italian family trying to live a normal life during World War II. Although a popular book, it’s not one of Bohjalian’s best-received novels. Bohjalian is a critically acclaimed author of more than twenty works of historical fiction. Over the course of his career, he’s won awards including the ANCA Freedom Award for educating Americans about Armenian genocide. He’s written for publications including Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest, and The Washington Post.

The Light in the Ruins opens in 1955. Francesca Rosati is brutally murdered in her home in Florence, Italy. The Rosatis are of ancient noble blood, and someone is targeting each member of the family. Detective Serafina Bettini is assigned to the case. She’s the only woman in the Florence homicide unit, and no one thinks she’s up to the task. However, she wants to prove she can handle it. To find out who’s killing the Rosati family and why, she must return to the events of 1943, when World War II raged across Europe.

Back in 1943, the Rosati family live a quiet and idyllic life in an ancient, sprawling villa called the Villa Chimera. They all believe that this villa is strong enough to protect them from the horrors of war spreading around them. They think they can go unnoticed and wait the war out in the countryside. However, they soon discover that you can never outrun war, no matter how hard you try.



The protagonist, Cristina, is eighteen years old. She spends all day playing with her younger niece and nephew, wandering through the olive groves, and swimming in the villa’s massive pool. Here, it’s easy to forget what’s happening to her people elsewhere in Italy. She wakes up every day expecting that the war will soon be over, and that she won’t have suffered for it. She keeps her niece and nephew as sheltered as she can, telling them only what they need to know.

We then return to 1955. The murderer has a strange and disturbing MO (modus operandi): He cuts out his victims’ hearts and places them somewhere significant. He chooses the sites of important paintings, such as the Florentine Bridge. This adds another layer of complexity to the case, which Serafina is running out of time to solve.

Back in 1943, the extended Rosati family have all moved into the villa. This now includes Cristina’s sister-in-law, Francesca, and her husband, Marco. Also present are Beatrice and Antonia, Cristina’s mother and father. The only member of the family who isn’t there much is Vittore, Cristina’s older brother. He’s an archaeologist, and he’s helping the Nazis steal art from local museums.



This is a detail the detective later picks up on, and it gives her that all-important first lead. Serafina’s superiors are still worried she’s not capable of dealing with this much violence, but we learn that Serafina has her own troubled past. She fought against fascists and Nazis in Italy, and watched her brothers die. She suffered serious injuries, and there’s much she can’t remember about this time—including the villa she stayed in. However, she doesn’t shy away from brutality, and so she’s not afraid of this serial killer.

Serafina interviews Cristina, who survived the war. She tells Serafina that Nazis took over their villa because they wanted to pillage an Etruscan tomb located on the land. Cristina and her family had no choice but to host them. One of the soldiers courted Cristina, and she didn’t feel like she had any option but to let him.

Serafina learns that the art references are linked to this tomb, and she suspects that the killer is someone who once got very close to the Rosati family. Through further reflection, she remembers that she also fought near this villa, and it may have been the Rosati family who tended to her injuries when she suffered from amnesia. However, she doesn’t know this for sure, and it’s not important to her until she identifies the murderer.



The narrative shifts back to Cristina, and we see her romance unfold with Friedrich Strekker. He hates what the Nazis are doing to people, and he distracts himself from the war’s horrors with Cristina. However, this is more a relationship of convenience than true love, which Cristina later resents.

Serafina discovers that it’s one of her old comrades from the war, Enrico, who’s killing the Rosati family, although how she works this out is not entirely clear. Essentially, Enrico hid Serafina on the property when she got injured, but Francesca found them and handed them over to the Nazis. He links his killings to artwork because he’s showing that the nobility is not invulnerable, and he wants the Rosati family to trace the murders back to him. We learn very little else about the murderer or how Serafina’s story ultimately ends.