Ignazio Silone, the anti-fascist, Italian author and political activist, continues to intrigue readers and stimulate their minds nearly four decades after his death. On Friendship and Freedom contains the first published collection of correspondence between Silone and his longtime friend the philanthropist and art collector Marcel Fleischmann.

Maria Nicolai Paynter, a recognized authority on Silone and his work, deftly guides the reader through the years dominated by Fascism and Nazism as well as the decades leading up to Silone’s death in 1978. Of particular interest for its human value, the correspondence gathered in this volume is most inspiring in that it reveals how two men of different cultural and religious backgrounds join together and share true friendship against all odds.