Christ Stopped at Eboli

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Wonderful portrait of a lost world - Rated
Carlo Levi was an anti-fascist in Mussolini's Italy(as well as a doctor)who was sentenced to a period of internal exile in the depths of rural southern Italy.
His portrait of the peasant world,with it's mixture of paganism,hunger and malaria is fantastic.He obviously empathises with the peasantry,but is never superior to them.Also,there is little or no self-pity("woe is me,a political exile").
This world vanished in the 1950's due to a combination of land reform,industrialisation and migration.Read Levi's account and wonder at a world that still existed in western Europe as recently as the late 1940s.

Pefect balance - Rated
This is one of those rare books that fits awkwardly into any clearly defined category. I think it's possible for different people to take something different from reading it. I read it whilst living in Italy and eventually spent a few days around Matera in Basilicata. So for me it was almost like a guide book.
Levi manages to convey the people and landscape in a creative and artistic way, but he never gets lost in lyrical descriptive prose. After all, this was no literary retreat; it was an exile from the Facist state of the time. He constructs a sociological study balanced with a personal and involved portrayal of life in a village half forgotten by the 'civilized' World. The greatest achievement is that he is never patronizing or condescending to the peasants, he is clearly connected to the people but still remains objective.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand the great divide between the South and North of Italy. It could also be useful to anybody wanting to study the politics of development and also to people who enjoy high quality literature.

A chance discovery - Rated
I came across this book by chance when we were sorting out a vast collection of books belonging to my late father in law. It was a very early Readers Union edition published in 1949 and printed on thin 'austerity' paper within a green linen hardback cover. The book was throughout a rivetting read, describing acutely and sensitively not only the peasants' lives as well as that of the 'gentry' in Gagliano (now Aliano) and Carlo Levi's previous exile village, Grassano. Levi's descriptions of the landscape are fantastic considering the landscape around Gagliano consists of not much more than ridges and ravines, also the stories, seasonal events and customs and supernatural presences - all brought excitingly and humourously alive. Amazingly the solution he suggests for the poverty-ridden south of Italy in the mid thirties is not Marxist dogma but a carefully thought out sustainability scheme more reminiscent of the anarcho-syndicalists of Spain at that time. I've read the book three times - still finding more, and found his paintings done during exile on an excellent website marchebonsecours.qc.ca/ex_expo/levi/eng/cataloa.htm - they are for me as an artist brilliant! What a genius! I 'm following Levi's footsteps and exploring the area this October on foot - it's amazing what a book can do...

A Book Painted with Words - Rated
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. Unless you have gone to “Search inside the Book” and read page three, the title may be a bit misleading: this 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.

Scintillating brilliance - Rated
Good things often come in small packages, and in an era where words like 'genius' are tossed casually around it will suprise some that one of the greatest books of the twentieth century should come in the form of a slim paperback as opposed to a phonebook fat epic.

In some ways this is a autobiographical travelogue, though in many ways a million miles away from Bryson et al (as good as they get). The author, Carlo Levi, wrote this while in exile during the period of Mussolini's rule.

Documenting life the peasants of Southern Italy, who were not Christians and therefore not even human for 'Christ stopped at Eboli' it is testament to Levi's brilliance that he makes such unrelenting bleakness so readable. This is not an upbeat book, but it is ultimately a very rewarding one, never pulling punches while showing the innate dignity of a beaten people when confronting a system that is both completely alien and hostile to them.

The book has many lessons for contemporary Italy, for whilst the poverty has disappeared, the problems of those brigand ridden days remain. Read this alongside Lampedusa's magesterial work "The Leopard" for an understanding of Italy that is deeper than a hundred books by Mario Puzo.