The Seed Beneath the Snow

Silone was 15 years old when an earthquake in his native Abruzzi killed his mother and five of his brothers. Before he was 20 he had established himself in Rome as editor of a socialist weekly. In 1921 he went off on the first of many trips to the Soviet Union and became a founding member of the Italian Communist party. Under fascism he hid at show more first, and then, in 1930, he fled to Switzerland, at which time, however, he also broke with the Communist party. The novels that made him world famous as an anti-Fascist were Fontamara (1930) and Bread and Wine, the latter first published in English in 1936 and then in 17 other languages as well as in Italian. Silone was virtually unknown in Italy until after World War II, by which time he had undergone a radical spiritual transformation that is explained in a very moving essay, "Emergency Exit," included in Richard Crossman's The God That Failed (1950). (Bowker Author Biography) show less