Corrado Alvaro’s Fear in the World was published a decade before Orwell’s 1984, but is not well known outside Italy, perhaps because of the timing of the publication just before the Second World War.

A work in three parts, which starts with aphorisms, shifts to essays, and concludes with poetry. The theme of human relationships runs through the entire book.

An argument for the centrality of language to humanity and culture, as globalization and expanding scientific knowledge create new threats to the "ecology" of language.