Akademik

(1902–1975)

   A gifted painter as well as an outstanding writer, Carlo Levi’s principal legacy is the famous novel Cristo si e fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1945). This autobiographical novel tells the story of a northern Italian intellectual who is confined to a small, remote village in rural Calabria by the Fascist government. The book’s moving portrayal of the peasants’economic and cultural backwardness yet great personal dignity swiftly won it a worldwide audience. It remains one of the most translated postwar Italian novels even today.

   Levi had already established his reputation as an artist by the time he wrote his classic novel. Before his arrest and exile for antifascist activity in 1935–1936, he had been one of the founders of the “group of six,” a school of painting in Turin that, in open contrast to the preferences of the regime, attempted to bring French influences such as impressionism and fauvism to bear on their work. Levi was elected to the Senate as a member of the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1963. He died in Rome in 1975.

   See also Confino; Neorealism.