Books with title A Bell for Adano

"Adano was a small Italian town, and its heart was a 700 year- old bell. Farmers set off to theier fields, bakers made their bread, and the faithful went to church by its resonant ringing. At the outbreak of the war, the Fascists took the bell to a factory in Milan to melt it down for guns and ammunition. When the Americans conquered Italy, it became Major Victor Joppolo's job to solve the problems of Adano. Above all he had to find a new bell in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles." ONE OF THE MOST MOVING NOVELS TO COME OUT OF WORLD WAR II.

A novel by John Herseyis a 1944 novel by John Hersey, the winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of an Italian-American officer in Sicily during World War II who wins the respect and admiration of the people of the town of Adano by helping them find a replacement for the town bell that the Fascists had melted down for rifle barrels.

John Hersey grew up in China, studied at Yale and Cambridge, worked as a journalist, and astonished the nation when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for A Bell for Adano. His first novel, its offbeat blend of patriotism and warm humor immediately captured readers' hearts. In 1943, the American Major Victor Joppolo finds himself the civil affairs officer-the mayor-of a small town in Sicily. Equipped with the rulebook, How to Bring American Democracy to Liberated Territories, he sets about bringing choices to a people whose every recent activity had been dictated. Asking them what the town needs most, he is answered: give the town back its spirit-a bell to replace the 700-year-old one that was melted down for bullets. The major soon discovers that he may not be able to guarantee democracy for the ancient town, but he can do something about the bell. His story is one of humanity in the midst of war's cruelty, and conviction in a maze of military bureaucracy.