Fontamara

Fontamara () is a 1933 novel by the Italian author Ignazio Silone, written when he was a refugee from Fascist Italy in Switzerland. It is Silone's first novel and it is regarded as his most famous work. It received worldwide acclaim and sold more than a million and a half copies in twenty-seven languages. It was first published in German translation in Switzerland in 1933; English translation was published by Penguin Books in September 1934. In 1980, it was adapted by Carlo Lizzani into an eponymous film.

Appearing on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, and published just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power, when the world was beginning to take sides for or against Fascism, the novel had a galvanising effect on public opinion. Fontamara became "the very symbol of resistance", and is "widely agreed to have played a major role as a document of anti-Fascist propaganda outside Italy in the late 1930s", as it criticises the immorality and deceit of the Fascist party and its followers.