Ethiopia (Location Key)

When V.K. Ratliff and Gavin Stevens are in Greenwich Village for Linda Snopes' marriage in The Mansion, the talk turns to "the war, . . . Spain and Ethiopia" (194). The year is 1936. In Spain the Civil War between Nationalists and Republicans has begun; Linda and her husband Barton Kohl will soon be fighting on the Republican side. Also a kind of prologue to World War II was the fighting in Ethiopia, which Mussolini's Italy invaded in 1935. To many, including the leftists with whom Ratliff is talking, the Fascist victories in these conflicts presaged "the lights going off all over Europe" (194).