This short book is a minor classic, written with great economy and understated ferocity. It is a product of the Italian South, which, like our own, has an extraordinarily rich literary heritage. An unusual number of talented writers (three of the four Italian Nobel Literature Prize-winners) have dramatized its social and economic predicament and have vividly portrayed the barren terrain with its decaying manor, ragged children, and docile peasants at the mercy of the landowners, the moneylenders, the elements, and every piece of bad luck. Alvaro has remarked that one could love this country only if one was born into it.

Revolt in Aspromonte describes a village in this poor and rocky land, and an indigent shepherd's struggle to free himself from the system that is throttling him. It was written in 1930, when the southern province of Calabria was literally still a feudal society, because the liberation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies with its supposed redistribution of the land had done nothing for the peasants and had simply increased the fortunes of the aristocracy. The village of Aspromonte was what it had always been, a cluster of tiny rustic houses built around the palace of the Mezzatesta family, who owned all the fields, farms, and animals by which the peasants eked out their living.

The struggle that takes place in this setting is between the shepherd Argiro, who has just lost his oxen, and the decadent members of that family, to whom he appeals for help. Alvaro masterfully pictures the plight of the shepherd as he stands before the fat, scornful patrone, head bowed, twisting his hat, answering the mocking questions respectfully. At last he stalks out, determined to fight back. This incident, which changes Argiro's life, makes an indelible impression on his young son, who has stood wondering by as his father is degraded and dismissed.

They visit the village moneylender, a crass and shrewd man who takes advantage of the uncomplaining peasants after the cruelty of the landowners has reduced them to desperation. With borrowed funds Argiro manages to get on his feet again, but he is still smarting under the blows of his oppressors, and his children's lives begin more and more to be shaped by their father's wish for revenge.

Argiro's eldest son, the gentle Antonello, goes away to work so that he can help to send the talented youngest son, Benedetto, to the seminary. The novel achieves its greatest poignance in the scene where Antonello, treated by his family with the kindness shown one about to start on a long, sad journey, realizes that he is a man.

We watch the family grow stronger in their hopes for Benedetto: Antonello, sweetly proud of him; the father, a trifle foolishly boastful; the mother, both afraid and trusting; the two deaf-mute little brothers, awed and respectful; and Benedetto himself, sure, ascetic, talking quietly, with his lids fluttering. For Argiro, Benedetto is to be the answer to centuries of oppression. The poor peasant is to have a spokesman. Then disaster strikes again. In a frivolous act of cruelty, three sons of Camillo Mezzatesta set fire to Argiro's barn; the mule is destroyed, and the entire support of Benedetto falls on Antonello, who collapses under the strain.

When Antonello finds out who has caused his family this final misery, he returns to Aspromonte as a kind of avenging god. At this point the tale becomes a parable, and Antonello is no longer the gentle son of a poor shepherd, but the spirit of the oppressed everywhere who sacrifices himself by a terrible vengeance to redeem his brothers. The last two chapters are saved from abstractness only by the author's passion, which raises his story to tragedy.

What Alvaro is stating is that there can be no dignity for man without justice. At the end, when Antonello goes down to meet the police, he says, "At last I have met Justice face to face. It has taken me long enough to catch up with Her and say what I have to say."