Books Free Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2) Download

Details Books Supposing Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

Original Title:	Vino e pane
ISBN:	0451529782 (ISBN13: 9780451529787)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	The Abruzzo Cycle #2
Setting:	Italy Pietrasecca(Italy)

Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

Ignazio Silone

Paperback | Pages: 304 pages

Rating: 3.86 | 2205 Users | 187 Reviews

Relation During Books Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

I think this book sets a personal record for me: I finally read it after it had been on my TBR shelf for more than 40 years! This is a novel of the Italian resistance to fascism set in Italy in the mid-1930’s. A revolutionary hunted by the authorities (as was the author) has returned to the country disguised as a priest. The real political action is in Rome but, emaciated and sickly (probably from tuberculosis), the rebel is hiding out in the countryside – still a land of poor peasants, donkeys and ox-carts. The area is the Abruzzi, a hilly region in central Italy due east of Rome but considered culturally part of southern Italy. As part of his disguise he coats his face in iodine to create wrinkles to look older. He avoids priestly duties despite demands for him to hear confessions and preside over baptisms. When he is coerced into some priestly action, he has good luck. He makes a life-long friend of a young woman on her death bed (from an illegal abortion) to whom he administers last rites; but she survives. He has an eye for the women including a married peasant and a wealthy lady. He makes a poor priest. If you irritate him his spiritual advice to you might be “Go to hell.” We learn a lot about the peasants, their poverty, politics and religion. “…the poor people whose capacity for suffering and resignation was truly without limit. They were used to living in isolation, ignorance, diffidence and the sterile hatred of one family for another.” Their lives are so hard that many have been disfigured and you can tell what kind of work they do by their disfigurement: stooped from mines, lame from heavy labor, bow-legged from harvesting on hillsides or ‘wall-eyed’ (abnormally white eyes) from years of work with furnaces. On religion: The church is for the government and the wealthy, not the people. A wealthy woman says: “Social inequalities were created by God and we must humbly respect them.” Some peasants accept this perspective and our rebel despairs at the peasants’ lack of political capacity. “Politics is a luxury reserved for the well-fed.” There’s a lot of talk of inequities and inefficiencies in the land system that serves to keep the poor peasants poor, and the rich landowners rich. There’s sarcasm about the economic system: “Finally, to make his fortune, he contracted some important debts and declare himself bankrupt.” One character says: “I think religion does for women what salt does for pork. It keeps up the freshness and savor.” Religion is mixed with superstition. The people particularly fear earthquakes. The priest’s landlady is desperate to have him stay at her house as a talisman against another earthquake. People remember the tremendous earthquake twenty years before (in 1915) in the Abruzzi region that killed 35,000 people. When he arrives in a small village, the local witch/herbalist fears him as ‘competition’ until she learns he’s not authorized to carry out his priestly duties. One old woman crawls up the church floor keeping her tongue to the ground, leaving a glistening trail like a snail. But there are also some good priests. He visits an old priest, a retired teacher who gathers former pupils in his home. All were idealistic rebels as young boys and the priest encouraged such thinking. But now some are rebels and some are wealthy fascists and even spies for the government. On politics: Spoken by those in charge of preparing for a fascist rally: “We’ll have to have some policemen on the trucks, so that the people will know that they have to come spontaneously.” The main character is disgusted by the Italian war against Ethiopia. Yet the war was supported by many peasants because the fascist government paid a stipend to soldiers’ mothers. They were so poor that some women prayed for the war to continue. “The country seems to have been divided not into just two different political parties but two different humanities.” (Shades of the current political situation in the USA?) The main character (as did the author) left the communist party because he felt it become as self-serving as the church and that it had come to represent ‘red fascism:’ “…has not the organization itself become the supreme value?” There’s good writing: “She did this with a tiny little voice and a fearful smile which looked as if it had been prepared behind the door and held in place with some pins.” The book reminds me a lot of Italo Calvino’s novel of the Italian resistance, The Path to the Spiders’ Nests. As Calvino did, the author gives a preface about how and why he revised the book in 1955 after it was originally written in 1937. Photos from grandvoyageitaly.com Sketch of the author by David Levine from The New York Review of Books at shop.nybooks.com

List Out Of Books Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

Title	:	Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)
Author	:	Ignazio Silone
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 304 pages
Published	:	June 7th 2005 by Signet (first published 1937)
Categories	:	Fiction. Classics. Cultural. Italy. European Literature. Italian Literature. Historical. Historical Fiction. Novels

Rating Out Of Books Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

Ratings: 3.86 From 2205 Users | 187 Reviews

Commentary Out Of Books Bread and Wine (The Abruzzo Cycle #2)

I had seen this book on a list of classics--now I know why! What is life all about? Is there a God? What can you do when yourcountry is fired up to go to war and you oppose it? Although set in the 1930's, it still relevant today.

A picaresque novel of a revolutionary who returns from exile by disguising himself as a priest. He moves from place to place to escape detection and work with the peasants. He gains their suspicion of all ideologies and the worth of individual relationships. There is no real plot, though the end is a surprise that didn't make a lot of sense to me.The idea of an alienated ex-religious believer living as a disguised priest has a lot of potential. The author taps some of this, as the "priest" very

A socialist on the run in fascist Italy. Disguised as a priest among the peasants. I liked the religiosity that saturated this view of politics, as the socialist aspires to be a saint and other martyrs suffer their fate at the hands of the government. Particularly vivid on Italys war in Africa (we dont see this war, just the recruitment), with the gathering of voices of those who must or want to be its foot-soldiers, and one anti-war slogan scrawled on a wall is a big event in the plot. A single

(The following review also appears in my blog.) Bread and Wine is Ignazio Silones moving 1936 novel of the the Italian socialist resistance to fascism in the early twentieth century. After only recently adapting to the industrial age of the long 19th century, the agrarian proletariat found themselves confronting the challenges of an emerging global age in the years leading up to World War II. It was an era ushered in by disasters: from the natural (including devastating earthquakes in the teens

A book about change, about trying to change, about efforts and exhaustion, about disappointment and hope.This is a book of all, what we believe in. You do not need to share the political view of the heroes to enjoy the book. You could see them as people who believe in change and try to change. A story of real people who still know how to make their own wine and their own bread.

I read this one in 1994 or so, prompted by Silone's associations with postwar French thinkers and the usual rot which attracts pseuds in their early twenties. I recall the crowd scene rather vividly as well as the author's afterward where he recalls encountering soemone reading his book while travelling on a train.

In Fascist Italy, a Socialist man recently returned from exile, in order to evade the law, is disguised as a priest--as an ecclesiastic he will have immunity from persecution-- and lives among the peasants of the Abruzzi. The novel chronicles his adventures, both funny and tragic and we are exposed to the peasantry. We see his growth as a human being. The ending was a shocker! The title could refer to the elements in the Mass or to the common food of the people. Highly recommended and just as