This book brings together the insights of historians and critics to examine the account given in a range of novels of the effect on peasant society of Fascist ruralist policies and the post-Second World War struggles for land reform. The authors whose works are discussed include Ignazio Silone, Carlo Levi, Francesco Jovine and Cesare Pavese. Pavese turns rural Piedmont into a paradigm of the nation to reveal the tensions of post-war Italy, while Silone, Levi and Jovine not merely challenge traditional stereotypes of the south but challenge the north’s conventional assumptions of superiority by offering peasant society as the source of alternative values. The themes of community and ownership of the land run though the novels discussed.