13 Facts About Ignazio Silone

Secondino Tranquilli, known by the pseudonym Ignazio Silone, was an Italian political leader, novelist, and short-story writer, world-famous during World War II for his powerful anti-fascist novels.

Ignazio Silone was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature ten times.

In 1917, Ignazio Silone joined the Young Socialists group of the Italian Socialist Party, rising to be their leader.

Ignazio Silone was a founding member of the breakaway Communist Party of Italy in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime.

Ignazio Silone left Italy in 1927 on a mission to the Soviet Union and settled in Switzerland in 1930.

Ignazio Silone suffered from tuberculosis and severe clinical depression and spent nearly a year in Swiss clinics; in Switzerland, Aline Valangin helped and played host to him and other migrants.

Ignazio Silone became an Office of Strategic Services agent under the pseudonym of Len.

Ignazio Silone returned to Italy only in 1944, and two years later he was elected as a PSI deputy.

In 1948 Ignazio Silone was a founder of the breakaway Union of Socialists, succeeding Ivan Matteo Lombardo as the party's leader in June 1949.

Saragat encouraged Ignazio Silone to stand for the Senate on the PSDI list in the 1953 Italian general election, but the experience was a failure, and from then on he spurned any active participation in Italian politics.

In 1967, with the discovery that the journal received secret funds from the United States Central Intelligence Agency, Ignazio Silone resigned and devoted all his energies to writing novels and autobiographical essays.

Ignazio Silone was married to Darina Laracy, an Irish student of Italian literature and journalist.

Three of Ignazio Silone's poems were included by Hanns Eisler in his Deutsche Sinfonie, along with poetry by Bertolt Brecht.