Carlo Levi Book order

Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian from a Jewish family, and his political activism forced him into exile for most of the Second World War. While in exile, he wrote Christ Stopped at Eboli , a memoir, and Fear of Freedom , a philosophical meditation on humanity's flight from moral and spiritual autonomy and our resulting loss of self and creativity. Brooding on what surely appeared to be the decline, if not the fall of Europe, Levi locates the human abdication of responsibility in organized religion and its ability to turn the sacred into the sacrificial. In doing so, he references the entire intellectual and cultural estate of Western civilization, from the Bible and Greek mythology to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This edition features newly published pieces of Levi's artwork and the first English translation of his essay "Fear of Painting," which was appended to a later publication of the work. It also includes an introduction that discusses Levi's life and enduring legacy. Written as war clouds were gathering over Europe, Fear of Freedom not only addresses a specific moment in history and a universal, timeless condition, but it is also a powerful indictment of our contemporary moral and political failures.

With his typically perceptive insights, Levi writes evocatively on his experiences in India, including his interview with Pandit Nehru, his tour of a tent city at a political convention, and his meeting with a Hindu nationalist party. This only available edition of a fascinating account of his impressions of the subcontinent is a valuable addition to the tradition of Western writing on India, made all the more fascinating by the influence that Levi’s famous memoir of exile Christ Stopped at Eboli has had on many Indian intellectuals. Published in 1945, that account of his time spent in exile in Italy after being arrested in connection with his political activism introduced the trend toward social realism in post-war Italian literature. 

Only a renaissance man could have described this glorious city in its heyday. And only Carlo Levi, writer, painter, politician, and one of the last century's most celebrated talents, could depict Rome at the height of its optimism and vitality after World War II.

Part autobiography, part sociological study, part travel memoir - a reissue of Carlo Levi's classic book on life in a small, desolate Italian town during the 1930s.