It was first published in 1936 in a German language edition in Switzerland as Brot und Wein, and in an English translation in London later the same year.

After the war, Silone completely revised the text, publishing a significantly different version in Italy (in 1955), reversing the title: Vino e pane (‘Wine and Bread’).

Bread and Wine has been published as part of The Abruzzo Trilogy, which consists of three novels: Fontamara, Bread and Wine, and The Seed Beneath the Snow, in a translation by Eric Mosbacher, revised by Darina Silone (Steerforth Italia, 2000).

Pietro lives in Abruzzo, in village of Pietrasecca (Marsica), and is forced to pretend to be a priest, to avoid arousing suspicion.

German communist composer Hanns Eisler used Bread and Wine for seven cantatas,[2] written in 1937, while he was staying with Bertolt Brecht in his Danish exile in Svendborg, despite Silone's being excommunicated from the official communist movement, and the Second Moscow Trial just taking place.