Harvey Swados

The essay, written in Italian, offers a critical evaluation of the American writer Harvey Swados (1920-1972), by highlighting both his non-fictional and his fictional writings. An initial biographical sketch illustrates this writer’s early political militancy within Marxist organizations in the USA (first in the Communist Party of the United States and later in the Worker’s Party), his involvement in the Second World War, his job as a worker in a Ford automobile plant, in Mahwah, New Jersey, and finally his activity as a liberal publicist and intellectual. Subsequently the essay relates these experiences to Swados’ nonfictional writings, and to his novels and short stories, and highlights his most significant works. In the end the essay places Swados within the tradition of engaged writers dedicated to the denunciation of the shortcomings of American society and to the edification of a more just and humane one.