Bread and Wine     by Ignazio Silone, Translated by E Mosbacher Original title: Vino e pane Original language: Italian Published by New American Library Pub. Date: August 1988 Pub. Place: USA Format: Paperback ISBN: 0451525000 Edition: Reissue List Price: $6.95 Not available for ordering Published by Gollancz Pub. Date: 1964 Pub. Place: UK Not available for ordering Published by Methuen Pub. Date: 1936 Pub. Place: UK Not available for ordering Published by Atheneum Pub. Date: June 1962 Pub. Place: USA Format: Textbook Binding Not available for ordering

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‘Watch Silone,’ said Camus. ‘He’s closely connected to his own landscape and yet wholly European.’ Bread and Wine, the second novel that Silone wrote during his years in exile (from 1935 to 1936) is the book that established his reputation as a writer by demonstrating the breadth and depth of his vision.

The main character, Piero Spina, is a kind of revolutionary the like of which has never been seen before or since in contemporary literature. The essential difference between him and other rebels of his period, like those created by Malraux or Hemingway, is that the latter are usually depicted carrying out deeds of courage while Piero, through the presence of informers and because of an illness, is forced into inactivity. His revolt, subsequently, is more an inner than an outer one, but there is no doubt whatsoever about his moral irreconciliability with tyranny.

Within the revolutionary movement itself Bread and Wine was a courageous act of self-criticism, but it should be added that it was the strategy of the movement rather than its values that were under discussion. Written ‘shortly after the fascist

occupation of Abyssinia and during the Moscow Show Trials organised by Stalin to destroy the last remnants of opposition’, as Silone points out, it was a book that early on prefigured the ideological crisis of our times that drags all political parties in its wake, old élites as much as new apparatchniks.

‘As the time for the declaration of war on the radio approached the crowd in the streets grew thicker. Motorcycles, cars, bicycles, cars, trucks loaded with party and corporation officials arrived from everywhere. Donkeys, carts, bicycles and trucks arrived bringing cafoni (yokels — Babel Guide) from the valleys. Two brass bands marched through the streets, playing the same anthem over and over again ad nauseam. The bandsmen’s uniforms were like those of animal tamers at the circus or porters at grand hotels, with magnificent gold braid and double rows of metal buttons on their chests. Outside a barber’s shop there was a big placard showing some Abyssinian women with breasts dangling almost to their knees. A dense group of youths had formed in front of it, gazing at it goggle-eyed and laughing.’ pp187-188