Italian · 1902–1975
A Turinese doctor who preferred painting, and an anti-fascist who was exiled for it. In 1935 the regime sent him to Grassano and then Aliano, two villages in Lucania where malaria was normal and the state was a rumour. He was forbidden to practise medicine and did it anyway, because there was no one else. He wrote the book about it in Florence in 1943 and 1944, while hiding from the Germans. It came out in 1945 and forced the southern question into Italian politics; parliament debated it. Levi kept painting all his life, sat in the Senate as an independent on the Communist list from 1963, and travelled to Sicily, Sardinia, the Soviet Union and Germany, writing books about each. He asked to be buried in Aliano, and was.