Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo (1948) is the first anthology of Mondo piccolo (Little World), the humorous and popular serialized fiction tales that primarily revolve around a Catholic priest, Don Camillo, a Communist mayor, Peppone, and the Talking Crucifix. The volume contains thirty-seven stories that had appeared over the span of a year, from December 1946 to December 1947, in Candido, the weekly conservative, anti-Communist newspaper that Guareschi edited (Guareschi 5).
The volume provides an important preface and three preliminary tales that Guareschi wrote to explain the salient features of Mondo piccolo as a literary creation. Beyond the Italian politics of the Cold War, Guareschi details how the geography of the Po River Valley south of Piacenza and north of the Apennines — an area known as the Bassa (Low Land) — bestows a significant imprint...
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Citation: Perry, Alan. "Don Camillo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32039, accessed 09 June 2026.]
