Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone

By Stanislao Pugliese

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 426 pp., $35)

In June 1950, Ignazio Silone and Arthur Koestler, two of the most prominent anti-communist writers of that era, attended a convivial dinner party in West Berlin. They had gathered with several other intellectuals to celebrate the founding conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an American-sponsored riposte to the Soviet Cominform’s “peace conferences” of the preceding year. Those were the early days of the Cold War, and more than a hundred Western writers, critics, and cultural figures had converged on the blockaded city of Berlin to demonstrate solidarity with its people and to resist the Soviet cultural and political offensive. According to Koestler’s wife, Mamaine, Koestler got drunk and repeatedly accused Silone of ignoring Koestler’s fraternal feelings for him. Silone was behaving, said Koestler, “as if he were a broad-bottomed Abruzzi peasant” and Koestler “a cosmopolitan gigolo.”

Silone made some mollifying remarks and claimed to be mystified by the outburst, but he was probably bluffing. Taciturn and even morose by inclination, and an uncharismatic speaker, he had the satisfaction of having just bested the loquacious Koestler in their public discussion about policy, while Koestler’s volubility reflected his own frustration at having lost the argument. The dispute had been about how best to respond to Soviet propaganda. Koestler advocated fighting fire with fire and carrying the propaganda war to the enemy by means of radio stations beamed at the satellite countries and the publication of books, magazines, and newspapers aimed at the Soviet bloc. Silone urged a less confrontational policy of promoting social and political reforms at home and merely showcasing Western cultural achievements abroad, so as to teach by example.

The German Mujahid

By Boualem Sansal

Translated by Frank Wynne

(Europa Editions, 240 pp., $15)

I.

All dictators, from Creon onwards, are victims.­ --Gabriel García Márquez

I.

Many years later, in the course of writing his memoirs, Gabriel García Márquez was to remember that distant afternoon in Aracataca, in Colombia, when his grandfather set a dictionary in his lap and said, "Not only does this book know everything, it’s the only one that’s never wrong." The boy asked, "How many words are in it?" "All of them," his grandfather replied.

Not being a military expert, I will abstain from judging whether the Israeli bombardments of Gaza could be better directed, less intense.

Not being able for decades to distinguish between the good dead and the evil dead or, like Camus used to say, between "suspect victims" and "privileged executioners," I'm also deeply disturbed by the images of the Palestinian children who have been killed.

In February 2001, while I was doing research for my book on the forgotten wars, I met Iván Ríos, the FARC commander who was recently executed by his own security chief and bodyguard somewhere on the border between the Columbian provinces of Caldia and Antioquia.

This morning's newspapers say he was 40 years old at that time. In my memory he was a little older than that.

In any case, he was the youngest of the seven members of the general secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

There was always a special patriotism to the speeches of Martin Luther King. No other American orator could bring audiences to their feet by reciting three full stanzas of "My Country, Tis of Thee." From there he often soared across the American landscape in perorations calling on freedom to ring "from the granite peaks of New Hampshire . . . from the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania . . . from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado . . . from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee! Let it ring . . .