Christ Stopped at Eboli

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Carlo Levi

Biography & Memoir

Aug 8, 2018

It’s possible to misread the title of this book and fall under the misapprehension that its theme is tied to the appearance—real or metaphorical—of Christ in a small town. In fact, Levi’s title represents an entirely different idea, namely that Christ—and all the history, spiritual and temporal, that followed in his wake—never made it to the tiny village of Gagliano in southern Italy, where the author was confined as a political prisoner in 1935 because of his opposition to Fascism. “We’re not Christians,” the people he meets there tell him. “Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.” The unsentimental, austere eloquence of the author’s expression is unforgettable, and imbues Christ Stopped at Eboli with a rare and telling beauty.

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Mariella Rinaldi

Jan 16, 2022

I've loved every passage of this book, maybe because the places described are so near to me yet so far in time...

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