Unlikely Allies: The Don Camillo Stories by Giovannino Guareschi

The Second World War has ended in the Po Valley of Italy, the country has become a republic, and the new order is fighting the old despite not being too different from it. In a small village, the Communists hold political power and believe themselves to be harbingers of change, led by the mayor Peppone, in a revolution that will overthrow the old order - particularly the Catholic Church, personified in the village by the parish priest, Don Camillo. However, in this small village where everyone knows everyone else, ideological battle lines are often faint and wavering, as more often than not Peppone and Don Camillo turn out to be unlikely allies in various minor problems that confront the village, and ideologically not too different.

This is the premise of a hilarious series of stories by Giovannino Guareschi, an Italian journalist and cartoonist, who wrote some of them while in jail, after having been convicted of libel for publishing the controversial wartime letters of a Christian Democrat politician. Despite his own political involvement, Guareschi treats both Don Camillo's and Peppone's ends of the ideological spectrum with gentle mockery and irony. 

For example, Peppone's Communism is forgotten when he wins the lottery and sneaks his bags of cash over to Don Camillo's church, so that the town doesn't learn of his windfall and demand that it be redistributed to the workers. Meanwhile, Don Camillo, who was born with "a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade," and seems to be well-regarded by the faithful of the village, often has to be reminded of his religious and moral principles, while often engaging in heated debate with the statue of Christ at the church altar. 

In fact, the irony of the whole rivalry between Peppone and Don Camillo lies in the fact that in reality, the Catholic Church still had enough power in Italy, particularly in a small rural area like the Po Valley, that the threat posed to it by Communism would be relatively small. While Peppone manages to boss around a crowd of sycophants, led by the amusingly-named Smilzo (Italian for 'inelegant'), many of these so-called Communists do come to church to have their babies baptised, even if the names reminiscent of past Communist leaders. 

It is this endless push-and-pull between Catholicism and Communism, and the entertaining good-hearted rivalry between its two representatives in the town, that makes these stories so funny. As the critic Frances Keene wrote in The New York Times, the stories make it clear why Italy, which at that time had the largest Communist party outside of Russia, also remained so imperturbably Catholic.

However, the stories aren't all about clashes between two ideologies, however poorly represented they may be. The Po Valley was economically badly affected by the war, and the village is frequently threatened by the flooding of the eponymous river, or other calamities such as the arrival of interfering officials from the city or a disagreement with another neighbouring town. 

At such times, Don Camillo and Peppone do manage to work together, however grudgingly. For example, when the local bishop has Don Camillo removed to a faraway mountain parish, Peppone stops the successor from making any changes to the church, and creates enough of an obstruction in that priest's plans that he quits and Don Camillo is reinstated, as Peppone had wanted all along.

As is often the case in a small town, these putative rivals are also good friends, and indeed seem to have fought together "up in the mountains" during the Italian Civil War. They are well aware of each other's foibles and qualities. In one story, Don Camillo is irritated at the village bandmaster for having played at a Communist party function, and refuses to hire him to play in the church procession. This turns out to be a flop without any music, till Don Camillo turns a corner and realises that Peppone has in fact brought along the whole band and the bandmaster, with two others as well, to play for the procession. 

The stories cover the postwar period in Italy, from the recession of the 1940s right up to the economic boom in the 1960s. As such, they comment upon several major global changes from the amusingly narrow perspectives of the two main characters. For example, Peppone is furious at the signing of the Atlantic Pact, and decides to have his own Polar Pact, named after the Po River. This turns out to be a sodden attempt at annexing an island in the middle of the river, which is foiled by policemen and Communist Party Officials from town. 

The last book in the series, Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels, is particularly humorous in this regard. The Vatican sends Don Camillo an assistant, Don Chichi, whose ideas about the Theology of Liberation are eerily similar to what the old priest has been hearing from Peppone for years. Meanwhile, Peppone himself is edging away from socialist ideals to more robust capitalist principles, as his mechanic shop has turned into a large hardware store, and his wife demands that he buy her a mink stole. The village is also dealing with the ramifications of various youth movements, including a band of Hell's Angels led by Don Camillo's niece. However, even in this changing world, Don Camillo and Peppone still retain their old irascibility and humanity - when the Po floods, they work together to prepare a barge and bring food to the displaced.

In a world riven and torn by religious and political fault lines, the Don Camillo books are a reminder, then, that shared humanity, experiences and humour can bring people together across these gaps. As the critic Steve Donoghue wrote in an editorial in Open Letters Review, books like these, with their warmhearted depiction of the unlikely alliance between two opposing ideologies, are appealing because "There are no points to be made – there are no points at all. This is a different kind of reading, one [...] akin to the sureties of bedtime stories." During these difficult and polarised times, they are a reminder of a gentler and more humane world.