Bread and Wine (Signet Classics)

In 1938, after fifteen years in exile, a member of the Communist Party returns to Italy disguised as a priest and finds truth and a meaningful way of life among peasants of the countryside

Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of the Italian author Secondo Tranquilli. A founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, he later declared his opposition to Stalinism and was expelled from the organization. Much of his creative output after World War II was written in opposition to Communism, and in 1969 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for his writing on individual freedom and society. By the time of his death in 1978, he had been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature 10 times.

Irving Howe (1920–1993) was distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City of New York and coeditor of Dissent magazine. His many publications include Thomas Hardy, Politics and the Novel, Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson, and Socialism and America. His Selected Writings appeared in 1990.

Barry Menikoff is a professor of English and American literature at the University of Hawaii. He has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and he is the author of Robert Louis Stevenson and “The Beach of Falesá.” He has lectured and taught abroad, and he has been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Georgetown University, and the University of Victoria (British Columbia).