Volume 49, Number 4 · March 14, 2002
The Mystery of Ignazio Silone
By William Weaver
La cultura a Torino tra le due guerre (Culture in Turin Between the Two Wars)
by Angelo D'Orsi
Milan: Einaudi, 377 pp., €19.63
Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
University of California Press, 317 pp., $45.00
L'informatore: Silone, i comunisti e la Polizia (The Informer: Silone, the Communists, and the Police)
by Dario Biocca and Mauro Canali
Milan: Luni Editrice, 275 pp., €15.49
Processo a Silone: La disavventura di un povero cristiano(Silone on Trial: The Misadventure of a Poor Christian)
by Giuseppe Tamburrano, with Gianna Granati and Alfonso Isinelli
Manduria: Piero Lacaita,161 pp., €10.33
For a country that has produced saints the way other countries produce cars, Italy seems to have an ambiguous attitude toward sainthood. A few years ago, when the Church drastically reduced the number of saints in the calendar, most Italians accepted the exclusions peacefully; the only serious protests were heard in Naples, where San Gennaro was defended not so much for religious reasons as out of local, superstitious affection. But not all saints are religious, and Italy has also been taking a look at some objects of secular worship. The buzz word in Italian intellectual and political circles over the past few years has been revisionismo, which could be translated roughly as 'reconsidering,' but would perhaps be more accurately rendered by phrases like 'taking them down a peg' or, simply, 'revealing feet of clay.'
Review, 6003 words
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