Christ Stopped at Eboli

Christ Stopped at Eboli

First Edition (Italian) (publ. Einaudi)
Author	Carlo Levi
Publication date	1945

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Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli) is a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935–1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in Southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives Aliano the invented name Gagliano (based on the local pronunciation of Aliano).

"The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of Gagliano who say of themselves, 'Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli' which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience." Levi explained that Eboli, a location in the region of Campania to the west near the seacoast, is where the road and railway to Basilicata branched away from the coastal north–south routes.