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Title: Christ Stopped at Eboli : The Story of a Year by Carlo Levi, Frances Frenaye ISBN: 0-374-50316-8 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1947 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Southern Italy: A country within a country
Comment: This a memoir of Carlo Levi`s experience as a political exile during the fascist regime, at the outset of the Abyssinian war. The setting is a remote village in Lucania, southern Italy, a region characterized by poverty, malaria, completely forgotten and neglected by the State. Levi's artistic sensitivity describes the people, the landscape, with an acute human feeling. This is the other side of Italy, the reverse of the rich, famous, well-developed North. After reading this book, it is easy to understand why so many Italians were tempted to emigrate to the American continent. Levi's ability to socialize and understand the peasant mentality is outstanding; it's a merit to his personality. The fact that he did not isolate himself from the people around the village, regardless of social and cultural level, enable him, after his realease, to write this book with a deep understanding of the social, political, religious, economical, and cultural problems of Southern Italy. The style is simple, direct, and elegant. Why Christ, why Eboli? the author only wants to say that the "civilized world" of Christianity has not reached this region of Italy, be it in Eboli or any other village of the South. An interesting book, written by someone whose main occupation in life was not be a writer. Levi was trained as a doctor, and as a "social doctor" he brush-stroked his thoughts into this memoir.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Book Painted with Words
Comment: This brilliant book is an account of Carlo Levi's banishment to a remote village in southern Italy for his opposition to Fascism in 1935. The title may be a bit misleading: this book is not about an incarnation of the deity that alighted in a place called Eboli. Eboli, a town of no consequence to the action of the book, is, rather, the farthest south Christianity (read: civilization) got. Gagliano, the town in which Levi arrives to carry out his exile, is as far south from Eboli as Eboli is from Naples, and is the end of the road in more than one respect.
In Gagliano, Levi lives a somewhat enviable (for an exile, at least) existence painting, writing, and, as a doctor, administering to the sick and injured. But the book is not about Levi's good works among the peasants. Rather, it is a series of sublime sketches about a people so grim, so primitive, so impoverished, so imbued with superstition and pagan ritual (Gagliano has a village priest, but he's drunk most of the time) that they seem an alien species. Levi doesn't so much understand them as observe them and paint them with words.
Levi's artistic gifts extend to his descriptions, and phrases such as "Grassano...is a streak of white at the summit of a bare hill" make the book come alive. It is clear that Frances Frenaye, the translator, deserves no small credit in this respect. This is a haunting work, and one of the most memorable books I have ever enjoyed.
Rating: 5
Summary: A graceful voice.
Comment: This book has a distinct sense of place. The remote ,savage landscape and its long suffering inhabitants is depicted with a kind of poetry.The priest given to despair in a pagan land to the peasants who shrug when their goats, even their furniture is taken from them from them by the state is contrasted with the local gentry and their petty feuds. Carlo levi was quite a man. Children followed him,women looked at him and touched their hips, dogs wagged their tails....This book is about a great man, a quiet man of conscience who revealed a hidden land and his soul during terrible times. A book to keep and treasure.
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Title: The Leopard by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa ISBN: 0679731210 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 23 July, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Abruzzo Trilogy: Bread and Wine, Fontamara, and the Seed Beneath the Snow by Ignazio Silone, Eric Mosbacher, Darina Silone, Alexander Stille ISBN: 1586420062 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: 30 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: History: A Novel by Elsa Morante, William Weaver, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison ISBN: 1586420046 Publisher: Steerforth Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
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Title: The Garden of Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, William Weaver ISBN: 0156345706 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Under the Southern Sun: Stories of the Real Italy and the Americans It Created by Paul Paolicelli ISBN: 0312287658 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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