Christ Stopped at Eboli: A Classic Novel of the Italian South by Carlo Levi (FSG Classics)

A. D. Revill: Very pleased with my purchase. Received quickly and good pricwe.

United Kingdom on Sep 21, 2023

Vigilantius: Desperate southern Italian poverty, stretching probably from medieval times, exposed by the compassionate observations of the Turinese narrator. (Carlo Levi was exiled by Mussolini for his anti-fascist activities to a remote Calabrian village during 1935-36.)

So much is in this fascinating and fluently written book. There is the extraordinary, beaten fatalism of the peasantry, underscored by deep superstition, which Levi relays without comment or irony. For example, ‘a lost baby a few months old was found on top of one of two trees flanking Saint Anthony’s chapel… A devil had carried him there, and Saint Anthony took him under his protection.’ The peasants hide their amulets and incantations from the respected northern Doctor, but Levi gradually discovers them, and is respectful.

Then there are memorable scenes of pig slaughter and harsh peasant attitudes, born of the desperate need to survive. Levi’s graphic descriptions render the sensual animality (to a 21st century urban mind) normal and acceptable.

There is an unexpected moment of epiphany in Levi as a shepherd lies dying after an accident: ‘I loved these peasants and I was sad…Why, then, at...

United Kingdom on Aug 08, 2023

Vmp: This is a wonderful memoir and reminds me of Laurie Lee in Spain with Carlo Levi's compassion for the peasant population among whom he lived in exile. It is beautifully written, lyrical in style and very moving. I loved it.

Netherlands on Jul 27, 2023

Jeremy Walton: I bought this to read on a trip to Italy last week, which included a visit to Matera in (what is now called) the region of Basilicata. Levi writes about his 1935-6 exile in this region (called Lucania at the time), describing the bleak landscapes and the poor people he lived alongside. They had an expression - "We're not Christians. Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli" - which he used for the evocative title of his memoir. Eboli is a town to the northwest of Basilicata and here, 'Christian' meant 'human being', because they thought of themselves as being mere beasts, having been bypassed by morality, or civilisation.

This view is made explicit in Levi's description of his housekeeper, who had a face "unrelated to man, but linked with the soil and its everlasting animal deities [with] cold sensuality, hidden irony [...] and an immense passive power" [p105]. The visceral link to the earth and the (other) beasts is exactly invoked in a passage describing the visit of "the pig doctor", who comes to castrate the young sows of the village (in order to make them fatter and more tender to eat). The operation is described with harrowing exactness ("blood spurted out over the...

United Kingdom on Jun 22, 2023

Ernest Ohlmeyer: What an interesting book! Set in the 1930s, it is a memoir of the time the author was exiled to a small, primitive town in southern Italy because of his opposition to Fascism. It could also be described as a sociological study of the people in the town and their rigid caste system - the impoverished and exploited peasants vs the manipulative and avaricious upper middle class gentry. The author explores this feudal-like system of exploitation is an objective and sympathetic way. He is definitely on the side of the under class, but not in a dogmatic or political way. Rather, he forms an attachment to the generosity and kindliness of the illiterate peasants, and as a doctor tries to help improve their lives as best he can given the intransigence of the rigid social structure. The author writes in a very engaging way about the social lives of peasant and gentry alike, and closely examines their individual behaviors and motivations. This was a very enjoyable read that I can highly recommend.

United States on Apr 10, 2023

SueC: The author describes the people in the village to which he is exiled in such graphic terms that, to me, it seemed more like a film than a book. The hardship experienced by the peasants and their treatment by the government of Italy of the time is heart-rending. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Italy in the years just before the second World War.

United Kingdom on Jun 15, 2022

Esteban Ess: The author, Carlo Levi, a doctor who has fallen afoul of the Fascist regime in Italy during the years leading up to World War II is exiled to a form of house arrest. But, this is no house arrest like we read about in the USA. One could call Carlo Levi's plight "Village Arrest". He is exiled to a small, agrarian, rural and primitive village in an isolated region of Italy well South of Naples. The populace is largely uneducated, but good at coaxing what produce they can from the impoverished soil of the region. Animal husbandry is on a very small scale. The village politicians, police and offialdom exact what tribute they can from the peasants. Carlo Levi is placed under the dominion of the village Mayor who exacts what tribute he can from his unhappy charge.

The book is translated from the original Italian. Many customs and daily ways of life will be unfamiliar to an American reader from today's modern society. This is what makes the book interesting. As Dr. Levi gets closer to the peasant population by treating them for this and that ailment, he learns about their superstitions , their politics and their family feuds and power plays. Enter another, unfamiliar world by...

United States on Jul 09, 2020

Rokodera: Christ Stopped at Eboli is a memoir of an Italian dissident exiled to far south Italy in the 1930’s. Despite the title, it’s not a religious tract. It’s just a reference to the remoteness of the area—so remote in Italy that not even Christ bothered to go that far out of His way; he went no further than Eboli.

As a memoir, it’s brilliant at capturing the humdrum, day to day lives of the desperately poor peasants, as well as the absurdities of parasitical politicians and the machinations of local gentry. (In that sense, it reminds me of The Soil by Takashi Nagatsuka, a depiction of daily life in early 20th century Japan.)

Underlying Carlo Levi’s tale of exile is a critique of the central government in Rome and the lethargy it fostered in the citizens. Toward the end, he says, “There will always be an abyss between the State and the peasants, whether the State be Fascist, Liberal, Socialist…we can bridge the abyss only when we succeed in creating a government in which the peasants feel they have some share…just as long as Rome controls our local affairs and wields the power of life and death over us we shall go on like dumb animals.”

He...

United States on Dec 13, 2015

R. M. Peterson: Levi, a doctor and painter and intellectual, spent a year in the mid-1930's in Gagliano, Lucania, a peasant town in southern Italy, exiled there by the Fascist government for unspecified political offenses. CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI is his sensitive and loving portrait of life in Gagliano. In many ways the peasants were still pagans ("everything participates in divinity"); Christianity as a religion had not yet penetrated that far south in Italy; in other words, "Christ stopped at Eboli" (a city somewhat north of Gagliano). Levi recounts in detail the lives and world-view of these Twentieth-Century European peasants, which is summarized in the following passage: "This suffering together, this fatalistic, comradely, age-old patience, is the deepest feeling the peasants have in common, a bond made by nature rather than by religion."

Interesting as it is, the book moves slowly -- probably much like the pace of life in Gagliano, but too slowly for me. Levi is not a particularly rigorous or logical thinker; his mentality is more that of a poet. Yet the writing, while not quite pedestrian, is at times ponderous and never really outstanding (perhaps that is in part the fault of the...

United States on Apr 06, 2008