When it first appeared in 1936, Bread and Wine stunned the world with its exposure of Italy's fascist state, depicting that regime's use of brute force for the body and lies for the mind. Through the story of Pietro Spina, who returns from fifteen years of exile to organize the peasants of his native Abruzzi into a revolutionary movement, this courageous work bears witness to the truth about any totalitarian regime--a warning as relevant today as it was in Mussolini's Italy.

Surprisingly tender and rich in humor, this twentieth-century masterpiece brings to life priests...

Fontamara is one of the Italian classics of the twentieth century. It was written in 1933 and was well-known in translation before it could be published in Italy. In England it was very popular in its Pengiun edition. Its author, Ignazio Silone, was a controversial figure throughout his life. He was a communist until 1931, later referring to himself as a 'Socialist without a party and a Christian without a church.'
He wrote Fontamara first and foremost as an antifascist, setting it in his own region of Abruzzo, east of Rome. He describes the sufferings of the peasants, the cafoni, still...

Rocco hatte in den harten Jahren der Emigration der Kommunistischen Partei diszipliniert und bedingungslos für die Befreiung Italiens vom Faschismus gekämpft. Sofort nach dem Sieg wird er in seine alte Heimat, in die Dörfer der Abruzzen, geschickt, um dort als Funktionär die Interessen der armen Bergbauern und Tagelöhner zu vertreten und die Politik der Partei durchzusetzen. Die Erfahrungen mit den abenteuerlichen archaisch-anarchischen Figuren in den Tälern der Abruzzen, mit dem Leben der armen und ausgebeuteten 'Cafoni' auf den Feldern, vor allem aber seine Konfrontation mit dem...