The first of a remarkable group of modern political novels appeared in the same year as _Man’s Fate_. It was Ignazio Silone’s _Fontamara_. “The poorest and most backward village of Marsica,” Fontamara is the scene of progressive encroachments of Fascism upon the life of its people. Exploited by The Promoter--a builder, banker, and local tycoon--the uneducated peasants successively lose most of their water supply, the profits from their hard-raised crops, and their right to talk about politics. When the protests of some of its people make it appear that Fontamara is resisting the Mussolini regime, Black Shirt thugs raid the village, abusing its people and wrecking houses. Goaded by the need for work, Berardo Viola and the son of the nameless narrator go to Rome to seek it. Fleeced of their money, they finally obtain the necessary certificates of moral character. But The Promoter has written upon them that the men are politically unreliable. Thrown into jail upon suspicion of distributing copies of _The Unknown Hand_, they meet the editor of this resistance leaflet. To save him, Berardo assumes responsibility for the paper and is beaten to death by the police. The editor succeeds in delivering a small press to Fontamara, where the villagers begin their secret paper, which they call _What Shall We Do?_ This phrase is not only the title; it is printed at the end of each story of Fascist atrocity. At the book’s end, the nameless narrator and his family are in hiding with Silone. The village has been wiped out by the Fascists. The book’s last line--not in quotes and therefore Silone’s question as well as the narrator’s--is, of course, What Shall We Do? Three years later, in 1937, the next of Silone’s fine political novels was published. _Bread and Wine_ marks the beginning of the disillusionment of Silone’s heroes with Communism which culminates in _A Handful of Blackberries_ (1953). Pietro Spina, the central figure of _Bread and Wine_, returns to Italy although hunted there as a Communist agitator. Ill and perplexed, he goes into hiding in the poor mountain village of Pietrasecca disguised as a priest, Don Paolo Spada. His disguise evolves into another self, reviving and intensifying the inner conflict he has always felt through a dual attraction to Christianity and Marxism. Before he returns to political action he achieves a sort of synthesis of what he thinks are the best elements of both beliefs, necessarily rejecting Russian Communism. Don Paolo tries to give his old teacher Don Benedetto the essence of his belief: If a poor man, alone in his village, gets up at night and takes a piece of chalk or charcoal and writes on the village walls: “Down with the war! Long live the brotherhood of all peoples! Long live liberty!” behind that poor man there is the Lord.