REVIEW
Anti-Fascist classic re-appears FONTAMARA “FENHIS is a novel of the ‘earth,
brutal, intense” are the words on the front cover of this paperback* So it is in some ways, but these are by no means the most striking features of this terrible story. It is told by three survivors from a Southern Italian peasant village, whose inhabitants, trapped by endless measures to destroy their livelihood, and worse still, their dignity, finally protest and are shot down by Mussolini’s fascists. We are shown fascism as its victims saw it, first as yet another form of exploitation, along with the Church, the landowners and previous governments, finally as something utterly destructive, against which there is no protest for the ignorant and helpless. As they realise their helplessness against such monstrous injustice they give voice to it in the newspaper which destroys them: “What are we to do?” is its title and theme, and the only man with an answer has been murdered in prison. But the answer is there: that complete unity between oppressed must be achieved before the oppressors can be defeated. * “Fontamara” by Ignazio Silone, translated from the Italian by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher, Panther,