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Christ Stopped at Eboli (Twentieth Century Classics)
by: Carlo Levi

Used Price: £7.99

Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780140183115
ISBN: 0140183116
Label: Penguin Books Ltd
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: July 26, 1990
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Studio: Penguin Books Ltd
Sales Rank: 381803

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Editorial Review:

Book Information:
"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.

"In turn a diary, an album of sketches, a novel, a sociological study and a political essay … a beautiful book" --The New York Times Book Review

"A sensitive and gifted writer .. Perhaps the best thing in his book is the detachment by which he avoids sentimentalising the peasants and at the same time renders their undestroyed feelings for human values' --New York Herald Book Review

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Wonderful portrait of a lost world
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.

Rating:

- Pefect balance
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 ... Read More:

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More:

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More:

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More:

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