ABSTRACT
If Conversazione in Sicilia was the novel which provided Elio Vittorini with national and international fame, Uomini e no was the one which caused him to be hailed as one of the 'fathers' of neorealism. Vittorini provided the reading public with the first fictional account of the partisan war and it did not matter that he had done so in a novel weighed down by a complex and over-elaborate narrative structure. Vittorini wrote the novel mainly during 1944, while in hiding from the nazi police who had identified him as one of the leaders of the Milanese communist partisans. The popular success of the novel was not matched by equal enthusiasm on the part of critics. In Conversazione in Sicilia, Vittorini had described a spiritual journey which, through a series of symbolic encounters, had led to the protagonist's achievement of a new conscience and a renewed faith in humanity.
