Rodolfo Doni is unique among Italian writers of his generation because of the themes he has pursued from the beginning of his career. Almost all of his major stories are built around the inner struggle of a person who comes to maturity after the crucial experience of the final years of Fascism and World War II. Doni's quintessential character returns to the strong religious beliefs of his youth during a period of hospitalization for a war wound and then attempts to realize his moral and religious convictions in the rough-and-tumble world of politics in the tense, polarized sociopolitical environment of Italy in the thirty years after the war. Doni initiated the genre of the political novel of postwar Italian politics by exploring the position of the discontented insider active in the Catholic party. Before Doni, in the Neorealism of the early postwar years with its many war and...