Synopsis
Corrado Alvaro’s Fear in the World was published a decade before Orwell’s 1984, but is not well known outside Italy, perhaps because of the timing of the publication just before the Second World War.
Alvaro had visited the Soviet Union as a journalist, but was probably motivated to write this dystopian novel by aspects of modernity that concerned him, particularly the use of fear for political purposes which was not afflicting Russia alone. He was interested in the psychology of fear and the extent to which individuals and the crowd participate in their own regimentation. The names of countries, cities and leading political figures such as Stalin are never referred to, but as in the works of Orwell they are clearly identifiable from their descriptions: the author was writing in a Fascist country against a Fascist censor and had to cut his cloth accordingly.
This is a dark novel, not quite as dark as 1984, but it is more claustrophobic. The feeling of inevitability is there from the first page, and it is experienced as we experience real life. The imagined truth takes us closer to where we really are. The travails of the love affair at the core of this novel quite possibly arise from perceptions that the regime exploits in a quite ad hoc manner. And it leads the reader through an extraordinary sequence of events and observations which encompass a vast range of emotions and ideas expressed in a unique prose style. The modern Leviathan appears to be a well-oiled machine, but towards the end it becomes clear that this is merely an appearance of efficiency and omniscience, but appearances can be powerful.
Alvaro is particularly interested in how the state uses quasireligious mechanisms and rituals to assert its power. The central character returns to the country after a long period abroad, and sees things initially through foreign eyes, living a life similar to the one Alvaro did when in Russia. He is not a natural rebel, and very much wants to fit in, but he finds this difficult to achieve. The regime boasts that it has an ally in history, but destiny is elusive, however much the characters feel that they are driven by it.
About the Author
Corrado Alvaro was born in the small town of San Luca, Calabria in 1895, and his father was a primary school teacher. When he was ten, he was sent to the Jesuit College in Frascati where he mixed with the scions of the upper classes of Rome. In 1910 he was expelled for reading a banned work, Carducci’s Hymn to Satan, but he was already well-read and had studied avidly, even producing his first poetry. By 1913 he had completed his studies in Catanzaro in Calabria, where he lived until 1915 when he enlisted in the army. He was badly wounded in 1916, and after this he started his precocious career as a journalist, rising to editor of Il Resto del Carlino and then moving to Milan to work for Corriere dells Sera in 1919. He had married Laura Babini the previous year, which would prove to be a long and successful “literary” marriage, as she defined it. In 1921 he became the foreign correspondent of Giovanni Amendola’s Il Mondo in Paris, and in 1925 he signed Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto of the Antifascist Intellectuals. His literary career advanced until 1951, when he won Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Premio Strega, with his novel Almost a Life. In 1954, he fell ill with stomach cancer which spread to his lungs, and in 1956 he died at his home in Rome where he left behind several unfinished novels.
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