Carlo Levi, Aliano and the rural Mezzogiorno in the 1930s: an interpretative essay

Carlo Levi's classic book Christ Stopped at Eboli provides unique insights into rural conditions in a village in Basilicata, southern Italy, in the 1930s, a time when objective documentation on Italian rural economic and social life was largely suppressed by Fascism. Levi's narrative is systematically analysed under the following heads: the relationship of the rural South to the central authorities in Rome; the character of the landscape around Levi's village of Aliano; economic life; social structure; social conditions, including poverty, health and education; emigration and return migration. The concluding discussion focuses on Levi's interpretation of the nature and causes of the ‘southern problem’ and his views of Basilicatan peasant culture.