Books: One Stricken Corner

One Stricken Corner A LIGHT FOR FOOLS (256 pp.)—Natalia Ginzburg—Duff on ($3.95).

Mussolini is mentioned only a few times in this fine novel, but it would not have been written without his help. Not since Carlo Levi's notable Christ Stopped at Eboli (TIME, Mays, 1947) have the Italian people in,fiction .worn so authentically the shabby halter of despair that the Duce imposed on them.

The book begins just before World War II, when most Italians could see nothing ahead but bigger doses of totalitarianism or castor oil. The old ones, like Heroine Anna's father, at least can look back to a...