#NonFicNov week 4 Reads Like Fiction

• Author: Carlo Levi (1902-1975)
• Title: Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year
• Published: 1945   (275 pg)
• Genre: memoir
• Trivia: Matera (setting book)
• Some of the scenes from Mel Gibson’s
• …Passion of the Christ were filmed here.
• List of Challenges 2018
• Monthly plan
• Non-Fiction Reading List
• #NonFicNov

 

Week 4: (Nov. 19 to 23) – Reads Like Fiction (Rennie @ What’s Nonfiction): Nonfiction books often get praised for how they stack up to fiction. Does it matter to you whether nonfiction reads like a novel? If it does, what gives it that fiction-like feeling? Does it depend on the topic, the writing, the use of certain literary elements and techniques?

 

• I have selected Christ Stopped at Eboli
• …which is rarely seen on reading lists.
• What gives this book it that fiction-like feeling?
• Top-notch writing….absolutely breathtaking!

 

Introduction:

1. Every Italian schooled in Italy has read
2. …Carlo Levi’s book Christ Stopped at Eboli.
3. Eboli is a town just south of Salerno in Southern Italy.
4. Once you go south past Amalfi, you enter the REAL Italy.
5. Carlo Levi was a doctor, a writer and painter who originally
6. …lived in Turin in the northern province of Piedmont.
7. He was an outspoken opponent to the creeping Fascism.
8. Because he was not quiet about his beliefs,
9. Levi was sent into exile for two years to a tiny southern Italian hill town
10. …in the southern province of Lucania called Aliano.

 

Why was this book so important in 1940s?

1. Levi’s writings went on to shed light on what was later called the Shame of Italy.
2. The Shame of Italy was the fact that the
3. …people of the nearby hill town of Matera lived in abject squalor.
4. Levi’s book caused an uproar
5. The people of Matera were moved out and into government built houses.
6. They were provided food and medicine.

 

What does the title mean?

1. Locals told Levi that “Cristo si e Fermata A Eboli”.
2. Christ stopped at Eboli, north of them and
3. ….not even Christ himself had cared to come this far south.

 

Conclusion:

1. This is an account of anti-fascist Carlo Levi’s exile
2. 1935-1936 in the peasant village of Aliano.
3. In the book the name is changed to Gagliano.
4. Strong point: Top-notch quality writing.
5. For example Carlo Levi describes Gagliano:
6. “…I had a feeling of disgust for the clinging contact
7. of the ridiculous spider web of their daily life
8. …dust-covered skein of self-interest.”
9. But at the end of the book Carlo Levi had difficulty leaving Gagliano.
10. This book is a gem
11. …but it has fallen between the cracks!
12. It is on my list of  TOP-10 books of 2018!
13. #MustRead….you will not be disappointed!

 

Carlo Levi