The ideological and literary journey of Romano Bilenchi is the same problematic and turbulent one traveled by many of his contemporaries and fellow countrymen, who, during the years of World War I, were little more than adolescents, and who suffered the heavy social and economic consequences of that period. Bewildered by the dramatic and confusing political postwar climate, they believed that they could find in the aggressive Fascist vitalism the only new and truly revolutionary force capable of returning dignity to the nation of Italy; for Bilenchi and his peers, Fascism--as instituted by Benito Mussolini--guaranteed the "return to order," invoked openly at that time in social, political, and artistic circles. As he wrote in Amici: Vittorini, Rosai e altri incontri (Friends: Vittorini, Rosai and Other Encounters, 1976) "Anch'io come molti altri giovani, avevo creduto che Mussolini, conquistato il potere, si fosse momentaneamente adagiato sulle forme del vecchio stato borghese...