6 May 2025: Italian Tutor/LLA Strahinja writes about the Abruzzo Trilogy – A Selection of Lesser-Known Novels
6 May 2025: Italian Tutor/LLA Strahinja writes about the Abruzzo Trilogy - A Selection of Lesser-Known Novels
During my fall semester in 2024, my Italian professor Giordano Mazza recommended to the class an author from his home region of Abruzzo known as Ignazio Silone. The book that was introduced to us is “Fontamara”, a novel detailing the fascist years. It was published in 1933, much before the Second World War. Thus it offers a glimpse into the time when Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship was consolidating itself.
Abruzzo is a region located in Southern Italy which was infamous for its agricultural and industrially-undeveloped state at the time, in contrast to the north which was highly industrialized and wealthier. The novel takes place in the eponymous imaginary village Fontamara, a pre-modern agrarian society that had little contact with urban Italy and where the people frankly were not aware of the happenings in Italy and Europe in general. This is what makes the situation interesting, as the experiences of rural folk under Mussolini were very different from that of people living in Rome, Florence, and other cities. Without spoiling too much about the happenings, the book traces the spread of anti-fascism in the village and resistance against Mussolini.
What is interesting to me is that the library copy of the book that I have borrowed is actually a trilogy. It features two more works – Bread and Wine and The Seed Beneath the Snow. I have yet to get to reading them, but, considering how much I have enjoyed the first book, I excitedly await an opportunity for more free time to dedicate to taking a look at Silone’s others novels as well.