The popular perception is that Giose Rimanelli burst onto Italy's literary scene in the early 1950s, glowed brightly for a few years, and then dropped out of sight just as suddenly as he had arrived. In reality, he had been writing well before achieving his initial success, and he continued to publish novels, poetry, and essays after he left Italy in 1960. His powerful first novel, Tiro al piccione (Pigeon Shoot, 1953; translated as The Day of the Lion, 1954), which brought him what many considered overnight success, had been written in 1945, immediately after his return from fighting in World War II. In "Notes on Fascist/Antifascist Politics and Culture from the Point of View of a Misfit," published in the December 1984 Rivista di studi italiani, he observes that his books tended to be "misfits," published either too late (long after they were conceived and written, or too early (before the...