Ignazio Silone

Ignazio Silone is the pen name of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian writer and politician who spent many years as an anti-fascist exile. He is best known for Fontamara, a novel about poverty and injustice among the lower classes, and his other books under the Silone name include Bread and Wine and The Seed Beneath the Snow. He helped found the Italian Communist party in 1921 but was later expelled for dissent from the Stalinist party line. He died in 1978.