Christ Stopped at Eboli
by Carlo Levi
Cristo si è fermato a Eboli is a memoir by the Italian doctor, writer and activist Carlo Levi, about the year he spent living in exile in an isolated village in southern Italy. Translated into English as Christ Stopped at Eboli, the title reflects the fact that Levi’s village was “so trapped in its own poverty that even Christ couldn’t reach it.” It was made into a beautiful movie, too (also called Christ Stopped at Eboli).
Recommendations from our site
“This is such a beautiful memoir. Levi was in political exile for a year under Mussolini, sent to a very impoverished town in the south of Italy. Levi himself is from Turin – aristocratic, well educated, left-leaning politically, very urban and urbane. This tiny dusty town shocks him, both its poverty and its class structure.” Read more...
Paula Fredriksen, Theologians & Historians of Religion
“I chose this book because not many people know it – it’s hardly on every bookshelf. Carlo Levi was an Italian Jew from Florence, banished in the 1930s by the Mussolini government for criticising the war in Ethiopia. He is sent to the ends of the earth, and it happens that the ends of the earth in Italy is southern Italy.” Read more...
Paul Theroux, Travel Writer
