Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
For my last nomination, I'm suggesting Christ Stopped at Eboli. Carlo Levi was a doctor subjected to banishment for anti-fascism in the mid 1930s. This is his powerful account of his time in exile in a primitive area in southern Italy.
The Italians in the club have no doubt read this, but perhaps they can weigh in.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paola
Guys you are right - rules are rules, there will be other months, and the book does not even exist in electronic format, so while I thank Beppe for his support, so let me take it back, it would be unfair to put sunsurfer on the spot, and I can keep this nomination up my sleeve for another month.
Christ stopped at Eboli is a great book, which I read eons ago, so glad to "second it.
Now I've got to think carefully about my third nomination... |
Thank you Issybird, it is always a pleasure to see an Italian book considered in an international contest. Indeed Christ stopped at Eboli is a great book! As Paola affirms.
Driving South from Naples, there is a place, more or less around where Eboli is, when one perceives that Europe stops, and something else starts. Even now. It is more noticeable driving from South to North, as one can see, after endless miles in a panorama that belongs to Homerus' times, the fertile fields, the factories, the power lines of modernity.
So the tale of Carlo Levi is very true. He was a great man, a father of the country, although always kind and modest.
He tells of his time in this God forgotten corner. Tells the story of the humbles, the violence that they suffer from the powerful, divided in the modernistic - on the side of the current government -and in the old fashioned - on the side of the brigants, the bandits - divided in factions but always united in taking advantages, in spoiling. Exactly like now, literally.
Unfortunately for us, the artist Levi tells the story, with much human warmth and sympathy for the humbles. He touches our heart, rather than our minds. I consider it a novel. A narrative. An example of minor neorealism ( the early Calvino and Pasolini belonging to the major, with Carlo Emilio Gadda leading by far).
I reread it quite recently as EBook. I enjoyed it, I liked the fresh prose, the warm humanity. But, being in Italy, I became so used to the drama of our deep South, to its hard crust, to its inclination to complain, and its resistence to change, that I could not finish it for the second time. A dejavu.
That is why I do not third it.