SOURCE: Hughes, Serge. Review of The Watch, by Carlos Levi. Commonweal 54 (10 August 1951): 436-37.

In the following review, Hughes asserts that The Watch “is one of the most beautiful nostalgic works to have come out of Europe recently.”

Carlo Levi's new book will never vie with his first novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli, in popularity. It appeals to a more limited number of readers. Where the first novel was brilliantly successful in conveying a fresh poetical interpretation of Italy's perennial problem, the problem of the South, and all of Levi's vision was focused on one place and one people, this second novel lacks both the intensity and the freshness of theme of the first. And the moods of the two works are so different! Whatever one may think of some of the political reasoning of Levi in Christ Stopped at Eboli, it was a hopeful vision he had. It...