Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone

by Stanislao G. Pugliese

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.

Genres: Biography, Italy, Nonfiction

448 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

fairly through treatment of silone the author, the southern hillbilly, the mystic, the communist, the misanthrope, the inspiration.
has nice pictures and bibliography
discusses his novels and essays and his marriages and work in exile and in Italy.
for lovers of "bread and wine" and his other writings.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I feel bad that I've never read any Ignazio Silone; apparently he's like John Steinbeck and George Orwell rolled into one. This was an interesting biography; it's academic, and sometimes a bit disjointed, but Silone's life--spurred to political activism by his childhood in an Italian peasant village, but so opposed to authoritarianism that he had just as many problems with the communists as the fascists--is compelling.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned of Silone when in a college seminar titled Politics and the Novel his Bread and Wine was assigned reading. It has been so very long and I find that with time I’ve forgotten the book. Nevertheless, a certain feeling that I had enjoyed it lingered.

Upon encountering this biography, I resolved to revisit this author. The biography, although a bit repetitive and disorganized, does a creditable job of portraying this man of many turns.