Product Description

'We're not Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.' Exiled to a remote and barren corner of Italy for his opposition to Mussolini, Carlo Levi entered a world cut off from history and the state, hedged in by custom and sorrow, without comfort or solace, where, eternally patient, the peasants lived in an age-old stillness and in the presence of death - for Christ did stop at Eboli.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70987 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-25
• Original language: Italian
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
The Italian-Jewish writer, journalist, artist and doctor Carlo Levi was born in Turin in 1902 where he practised medicine until 1930. In 1935 he was exiled to the province of Lucania because of his antifascist activities. Levi lived in France between 1939 and 1941 and his documentary novel, CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI, was an international success. Levi also wrote non-fiction and worked as an editor, journalist and painter. He was elected to the Senate in 1963, and served until his death in 1975.

Customer Reviews

A Book Painted with Words
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
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.

A chance discovery
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...