Cultural Writing. Memoir. Edited and translated from the Italian by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Ignazio Silone, anti-fascist and founding member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) offers a politically conscious and soul searching memoir which details his own PSI activities and the various factors engendering the necessity for action on behalf of liberty and democracy among the working classes. Over the course of his political career, Silone wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction works, and was imprisoned in Italy, France, Spain, and finally in Switzerland where he composed this memoir in 1942. Often compared with Andre Malraux and Albert Camus, Silone was awarded an honorary degree by Yale University, was a recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.