Gagliano

Gagliano, in Lacania Province, Italy, is where nearly the entire book takes place. Gagliano is a city "without a history" that seems to have remained unchanged for centuries if not millenia. Don Carlo's illustration of the townspeople is the main part of the book. The people of Gagliano live in incredible poverty; their town is constantly afflicted by malaria, and they are illiterate. The townspeople are "pre-Christian" in that they still inhabit a largely pagan world, full of superstition. The people regard themselves as beyond hope, for all the forces that could help them are either indifferent or against them. They hate, in particular, the State, which they see as a constant source of hardship and oppression.

The town seems small to Carlo at first, and it is, with only twelve-hundred inhabitants, but it has lower and upper halves, with various homes of gentry and peasant. The...