Organized by the ‘Comitato nazionale per il centenario della nascita di Ignazio Silone’, this conference was the culmination of a year of events. Held in collaboration with the three universities of the Abruzzo, its aim was to avoid an overly celebratory tone and to provide a working forum for ongoing research. The theme was not just Silone as writer and political activist but also the broader context of his early career. The organizers wanted to make a serious academic contribution to the debates which have raged over the last three years as to whether Silone collaborated with the Fascist political police. The press has created the impression that there are two fronts or camps: those who believe Silone was an informer (‘led’ by the historians Maurizio Canali and Dario Biocca, co-authors of the L'informatore: Silone, i comunisti e la polizia1) and those who believe the evidence has been exaggerated or even invented (Mimmo Franzinelli, author of I tentacoli dell'Ovra2 and Giuseppe Tamburrano, director of the Fondazione Pietro Nenni). For the. rst time, this centenary conference set out to bring the two sides together away from media clamour and, unsurprisingly, they appeared neither united in themselves nor united against each other.