Ignazio Silone
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Ignazio Silone (May 1, 1900 - August 22, 1978) is the pseudonym of Secondo Tranquilli, an Italian author.
He was born in the town of Pescina in the Abruzzo region and lost many family members, including his mother, in the 1915 Avezzano earthquake. His father had died in 1911. He joined the Young Socialists, and rose to be their leader. In 1917 he was arrested for the first time in an anti-war protest. He was a founder member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (CPI) in 1921, becoming one of its covert leaders.
Ignazio's brother Romulo Tranquilli was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the CPI and he died in prison in 1931, a result of the severe beatings he received.
He left Italy in 1928 on a mission to the USSR, and settled in 1930 in Switzerland. There he declared his opposition to Stalin, and support for Trotsky and Zinoviev. He was expelled from the Party. In the same year he began writing his first novel, Fontamara.
The US Army printed unauthorised versions of Fantamara and Bread and Wine and distributed them to the Italians during the liberation of Italy after 1943. These two books together with The Seed Beneath the Snow form the Abruzzo Trilogy.
He returned to Italy only in 1945, when he was elected as a Socialist deputy. He left politics, and founded the magazine Tempo. Two Italian historians, Dario Biocca and Mauro Canali, began finding documents in 1997 that suggest Silone may have been acting as an informant for the Fascist police from 1924 until he left for Switzerland in 1930.
Bibliography
- Fontamara (1931)
- Bread and Wine (Vino E Pane) (1937)
- The School for Dictators (1938)
- The Living Thoughts of Mazzini (1939)
- The Seed Beneath the Snow (1940)
- The God That Failed (1949)
- Emergency Exit (1951)
- Handful of Blackberries (1952)
- The Story of a Humble Christian (1968)
Further reading
- La Coperta Abruzzese. Il filo della vita di Ignazio Silone. author Maria Moscardelli - ed. Aracne - Roma (2004)de:Ignazio Silone