![]() ![]() ![]() The peasants have no interest in the State, and the State seems to have no interest in them except when collecting taxes everything is run by and for the "signori", the rump of dim-witted self-serving priests, teachers, lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers and public officials who were not bright and ambitious enough to get away to America or to the cities. The peasants he meets live in appallingly bad conditions: there's nowhere near enough good land to feed them, deforestation and malaria make working the land difficult and unproductive, and the economy runs largely on the savings of those American emigrants who return home and buy a piece of barren desert. The slightly puzzling title turns out to be a characteristic local saying, implying that civilisation never reached their region, and Levi sets out to show us the truth behind that hyperbole. Later on, during the war, he wrote this account of his experiences in the south, and it was published to huge acclaim shortly after the liberation in 1945. He was sent to the barren southern region of Lucania (Basilicata) early in 1935 and spent a year living in the villages of Grassano and Aliano (disguised as "Gagliano" in the book) before being released in a general amnesty in summer 1936. ![]() The painter Carlo Levi was one of the thousands of anti-fascists subjected to a period of confino - a kind of preventive internal exile in a remote village or island - under Mussolini. ![]()
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