We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. Natalia Ginzburg ( Italian: [nataˈliːa ˈɡintsburɡ], German: [ˈɡɪntsbʊʁk]; née Levi; 14 July 1916 – 7 October 1991) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. There is one book . . . which has meant more to me than any other: The Little Virtues, by the Italian novelist, essayist, playwright, short-story writer, translator, and political activist Natalia Ginzburg."— The New Yorker Sept. 2016 From “one of the most distinguished writers of modern Italy” ( New York Review of Books), a classic novel of society in the midst of a war.

Natalia Ginzburg, a glowing light of modern Italian literature, should be more widely read and fervidly known by American readers.”— The New York Times Book Review The author’s mosquito-like tendencies are echoed in her character Anna. In Ginzburg’s coolly repetitious indirect speech Cenzo Rena tells Anna that while “there were certain things that women ought to know, she knew nothing because she had always lived like an insect. She had always lived like an insect in a swarm of other insects.” Later, when Cenzo Rena is ill, he says it would be a “disaster” if he died, “because, when all was said and done, he had never made her turn into a real person at all, when all was said and done she was still just an insect, a little lazy, sad insect in a leaf, he himself had been just a big leaf to her”. Giffuni, Cathe (June 1993). "A Bibliography of the Writings of Natalia Ginzburg". Bulletin of Bibliography. Vol.50, no.2. pp.139–144.

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Born in Palermo, Sicily in 1916, Ginzburg spent most of her youth in Turin with her family, as her father in 1919 took a position with the University of Turin. Her father, Giuseppe Levi, a renowned Italian histologist, was born into a Jewish Italian family, and her mother, Lidia Tanzi, was Catholic. [1] [2] Her parents were secular and raised Natalia, her sister Paola (who would marry Adriano Olivetti) and her three brothers as atheists. [3] Their home was a center of cultural life, as her parents invited intellectuals, activists and industrialists. At age 17 in 1933, Ginzburg published her first story, I bambini, in the magazine Solaria.

Ma ogni personaggio viene individuato e circoscritto: ha la sua storia e compie il suo destino che intreccia la storia e il destino del tempo in cui si trova a vivere (il fascismo, la guerra, il dopoguerra), uno sfondo che ha senso solo per come incide e trasforma le vite individuali. All Our Yesterdays is definitely an accomplished novel, yet somehow I find myself with very little to say about it. The setting is Fascist rural Italy before and during the Second World War; the narrative follows a teenage girl called Anna and her family. The pace is dilatory although there are some vivid scenes, especially towards the end. Perhaps reading it during a weekend break after having my brain blasted by In the Country of Last Things diminished its impact? Or maybe I just wasn't in the right mood to do it justice. I could tell intellectually that it was a good novel, yet did not feel it. The run-on sentences reminded me of Elena Ferrante, but somehow they didn't carry the same emotional weight as hers. Nonetheless, I appreciated the treatment of war and ideology:

Lessico famigliare (1963). Family Sayings, transl. D.M. Low (1963); The Things We Used to Say, transl. Judith Woolf (1977); Family Lexicon, transl. Jenny McPhee (2017) Anna, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in a small town in northern Italy, finds herself pregnant after a brief romance. To save her reputation, she marries an eccentric older family friend, Cenzo Rena, and they move to his village in the south. Their relationship is touched by tragedy and grace as the events of their life in the countryside run parallel to the war and the encroaching threat of fascism – and in their wake, a society dealing with anxiety and grief. Cenzo Rena’s patronising pronouncement fails to comprehend the power of belonging to a “swarm”: the value of sharing and moving together, with a joint mission. He has already declared that he is no communist, for the most trivial of reasons (“he had a horror of living with anyone and for that reason Communism would never suit him, for he had been told that a large number of people had to live together in the same house”). Anna, who is young yet knows her mind, understands what it is to feel part of a force for change. She remembers sitting round a table with her lively, politically active brothers – even if, like Ginzburg, she was doing more listening than talking.

La novela se centra en una familia italiana normal, que vive su día a día y se mantiene actualizada sobre las noticias, tratando de sobrevivir como puede a ellas. Cada uno está enfocado en sus problemas particulares y, aunque algunos están interesados en los temas políticos, realmente no es la mayor de sus preocupaciones. En el transcurso de la novela es posible ver cómo esto va cambiando, cómo todo el mundo se vuelve parte de la guerra tarde o temprano, cómo la guerra toca a cada uno y le cambia la vida. Cenas da vida na aldeia. É basicamente isso que define esta obra de Natalia Ginzburg, que segue um leque de personagens ligadas a quatro famílias, antes, durante e após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Lately, I've found myself revisiting authors. I recently read and loved All Our Yesterdays and I needed to try another Ginzburg read.