Giuseppe Jovine, poet, short-story writer, journalist, politician, and literary and social critic, has emerged, after his older cousin Francesco Jovine and the poet Eugenio Cirese, as one of the leading writers and intellectuals of the region of Molise. As with his two predecessors, at the heart of his work is an abiding concern for the social, economic, and political problems confronting his relatively less developed native region in a world dominated by mass communication and extremely rapid changes at all levels of the social spectrum. Even more pronounced is his political commitment, both in his literary production and in his intense activity as a journalist and lecturer, on the side of social reform and outspokenly against a political class that in his view is subservient to a widespread patronage system and insensitive to real economic and social needs. Therefore his use of dialect in his book of poetry...