Surprisingly tender and rich in humor, this twentieth-century masterpiece brings to life priests and peasants, students and revolutionaries, simple girls and desperate women in a vivid drama of one man's struggle for goodness in a world on the brink of war. Ranked with Orwell and Camus among writers who insisted upon linking the hope for social change with the values of political liberty, Silone is one of the major voices of our time, and Bread and Wine is his greatest novel. As Irving Howe notes in his Introduction, "Bread and Wine will speak to anyone, of whatever age, who tries sincerely to reflect upon man's fate in our century."

Translated by Eric Mosbacher, with an Introduction by Irving Howe and an Afterword by Barry Menikoff