SOURCE: Mandel, Siegfried. “Pre- & Ant-Christian.” Saturday Review of Literature 33, no. 8 (25 February 1950): 30.

In the following review, Mandel outlines the major thematic concerns of Of Fear and Freedom.

Carlo Levi is now known in this country for his brilliant Christ Stopped at Eboli, a sociological, anthropological, and political diary-novel describing Levi's year of exile in a small Southern Italian town because of political activities against Mussolini in 1935. Toward the close of the book he makes a strong distinction between two civilizations—that of the country and that of the city. The former he regards as pre-Christian, the latter as a civilization no longer Christian.

Of Fear and Freedom explores briefly but profoundly in essay form the question of what is psychologically common to both civilizations and what is materially different. What might be taken for Mr. Levi's main theme is his cogent observation:

History is nothing but the eternal venture...