Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone [Hardcover]

Stanislao G. Pugliese (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374113483 | ISBN-13: 978-0374113483 | Publication Date: June 9, 2009 | Edition: First Edition

One of the major figures of twentieth-century European literature, Ignazio Silone (1900–78) is the subject of this award-winning new biography by the noted Italian historian Stanislao G. Pugliese. A founding member of the Italian Communist Party, Silone took up writing only after being expelled from the PCI and garnered immediate success with his first book, Fontamara, the most influential and widely translated work of antifascism in the 1930s. In World War II, the U.S. Army printed unauthorized versions of it, along with Silone’s Bread and Wine, and distributed them throughout Italy during the country’s Nazi occupation. During the cold war, he was an outspoken opponent of Soviet oppression and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Twenty years after his death, Silone was the object of controversy when reports arose indicating that he had been an informant for the Fascist police. Pugliese’s biography, the most comprehensive work on Silone by far and the first full-length biography to be published in English, evaluates all the evidence and paints a portrait of a complex figure whose life and work bear themes with contemporary relevance and resonance. Bitter Spring, the winner of the 2008 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, is a memorable biography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers against totalitarianism in all its forms, set amid one of the most troubled moments in modern history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There was a time when Ignazio Silone was the most famous Italian author in the world. His earliest novels, such as Fontamara and Bread & Wine, were praised for their depictions of peasant life in his native Abruzzo. As Pugliese reveals in this solid and engaging biography, Silone's literary reputation in his own country was complicated by his political legacy; having joined the Italian Communists to advocate social justice and fight fascism, the author was dismayed by the party's authoritarian tendencies and was eventually expelled. Pugliese (whose previous book was on Carlo Rosselli, Silone's contemporary in the Italian socialist movement) builds his biographical case in careful blocs of information, describing the drama while maintaining the narrative. This holds true even during a review of the controversial discovery, 20 years after Silone's death, of documents that suggest he might have given information to the Fascist police while still a Party member. In graceful prose, Pugliese offers a few intriguing theories (was Silone shielding someone? was he hiding a homosexual affair?), but reluctantly concedes that we may never know the full truth. Whatever did happen, Pugliese concludes, led Silone to create œsome of the most poignant and powerful fiction of the 20th century. (June)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Often compared to luminaries such as George Orwell and Graham Greene, Ignazio Silone has somehow eluded the attention of English-speaking biographers. Until now. With this assiduously researched work, Pugliese finally gives readers a mature account of a life that produced some of the twentieth century’s most powerful and widely translated literary art and political commentary. A compellingly detailed narrative reveals how a difficult childhood in rural Italy inspired religious faith that never fit within ecclesiastical orthodoxy and kindled political passion that defied ideological conformity. Readers see how the young writer risked imprisonment and death to help found Italy’s Communist Party but then repeatedly defied party leaders, denouncing Stalinist atrocities so fearlessly that his comrades expelled him from their movement. Yet Pugliese recognizes that this expulsion emancipated the novelist’s creative energies, liberating him to write fiction that would forever enrich European literature as it exposed the dehumanizing brutality of fascism in Fontamara and illuminated the risks of partisan commitment in Bread and Wine. In the autobiographical elements of Silone’s novels, some critics have adduced evidence that the young writer treacherously collaborated with Fascist authorities. Pugliese insists on a more ambiguous reading of the literary art—and of the life that produced it. A much-needed work of literary and political scholarship. --Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374113483
• ISBN-13: 978-0374113483
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,249,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars power and sex, May 5, 2010

By 

Renato Baserga (Ardmore, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Hardcover)

One of the characters in Ignazio Silone's L'avventura di un povero cristiano says that the thirst for power is even more powerful than the sexual instinct, because, he adds, "I have known many chaste persons who could not resist the temptation of power". The character was Celestino V, the only pope who ever abdicated from the papacy, and who knew quite a few things about power (and chastity). This is the biography of a man who resisted the temptations of power, a biography that is well written, very interesting and clever (if you wish to have a good laugh, read the story of the devil and the school boys). Silone's first book, Fontamara (which, by the way, translates as Bitter Spring in English) was one of the most powerful accusations ever made against Fascism, and this at a time when Fascism and Nazism were triumphant. It is the biography of a man who fought for the poor, and when you read this biography, you should disregard the poat-mortem accusations (it is vile to accuse a dead person when he/she can no longer defend himself). Silone was the conscience of socialism, and the socialist parties in Italy would do better at the elections if they had the conscience of Silone.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Question Authority?, June 29, 2009

By 

Theoni Lussos "Kandy" (Fitchburg, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed reading this book about the founder of the Italian Communist Party, ignazio Silone as I think that his run in with Stalin shows the problems with a one party, one leader rule that is particularly important for America now as we have so many television stations (ABC, MSNBC) dedicated to only presenting the official view.

As a biography I had a lot of respect for this man, "a Christian with no Church, a communist with no party" and I found myself surprisingly agreeing with alot of his beliefs and stands. While Silone may be no Patrick Henry, author of "Give me liberty or Give me death" I think his views and literature are as important particularly in these statist days. I enjoyed the book greatly and am going to read some of Silone's books as well...I think I could learn a lot and this biography is a great introduction.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rescued from Neglect, October 26, 2010

By 

Ray Moseley (London) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Hardcover)

By Ray Moseley (London, UK)
His name is unknown to many of the current generation, but Ignazio Silone was one of the great Italian writers of the twentieth century and deserves far better than the relative oblivion to which he has been assigned. Not only are his greatest novels, Bread and Wine and Fontamara, moving and still relevant accounts of life under Fascist dictatorship, but Silone's own life has a distinctly novelistic quality: Survivor of a deadly earthquake in his teens, a self-educated man of humble origins, a Christian disillusioned with formal Christianity, a founding member of the Italian Communist Party later expelled from its ranks, a man imprisoned, self-exiled and later accused of collaboration with Fascist police. More than all that, an enigmatic personality difficult for a biographer to delineate. Stanislao Pugliese has risen to the challenge and brought this rather ignored writer back to our attention with a vivid, compelling, and well-researched biography, the first in English and a book that deserves to be widely read. I can only hope it will stimulate many people unfamiliar with Silone's work to discover what they have been missing.