SECRECY AND SILENCE are second nature to Marcello Clerici the hero of TheConformist a book which made Alberto Moravia one of the worlds most readpostwar writers... » 

SECRECY AND SILENCE are second nature to Marcello Clerici the hero of TheConformist a book which made Alberto Moravia one of the worlds most readpostwar writers. Clerici is a man with everything under control a wife wholoves him colleagues who respect him the hidden power that comes with hissecret work for the Italian political police during the Mussolini years. Butthen he is assigned to kill his former professor now in exile to demonstratehis loyalty to the Fascist state and falls in love with a strange compellingwoman his life is torn open and with it the corrupt heart of Fascism.Moravia equates the rise of Italian Fascism with the psychological needs of hisprotagonist for whom conformity becomes an obsession in a life that hasincluded parental neglect an oddly selfconscious desire to engage in cruelacts and a type of male beauty which to Clericis great distress other menfind attractive.Moravia brings to light the devil in the flesh and in the psyche. TheAtlantic Monthly «