The setting of this novel is poverty-stricken southern Italy under Mussolini's fascist regime -- but it could easily be any time, anywhere that the helpless and dispossessed see their very existence threatened by the powers that rule and own the earth. Ignazio Silone's searingly compassionate vision of the human condition gives a fable-like quality to this story of peasants searching for a way to stop the legal theft of their vital source of water -- a story that comes to center around Berardo, the untutored, hot-tempered young man who becomes their leader and eventually a martyr. There is no idealistic rhetoric in this deeply moving novel; instead there is a blend of pungent reality and earthy humor, of cutting irony and the unsentimental facing of facts, that makes "Fontamara" one of the major works of fiction to emerge form the social, political, and economic crucible of the 1930s

"... a spirited, well-researched volume ... this highly readable study is an impressive work ofcontemporary criticism, richly deserving of its intended general and academic audiences." - Choice Can a novel cause riots, start a war, free serfs or slaves, break up marriages, drive readers to suicide, close factories, bring about law change, swing an election, or serve as a weapon in a national or international struggle? The author explores this question in the form of a theoretical essay on narrative and power, followed by five detailed case studies of works by Turgenev, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ignazio Silone, Solzhenitsyn and Salman Rushdie, each of which had or was said to have had a major impact on the political events in its time. Forcefully argued and written with a minimum of jargon, this book no doubt appeals to a wide readership well beyond that of the specialist in literature.

This bibliography lists English-language translations of twentieth-century Italian literature published chiefly in book form between 1929 and 1997, encompassing fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, librettos, journals and diaries, and correspondence.

The desolate, impoverished mountain region of the Abruzzo during Mussolini's reign provides the backdrop for the three greatest novels of Ignazio Silone, one of the century's most important writers. Together, these revolutionary works create an indelible image of ordinary people struggling against overwhelming events.