Natalia Ginzburg

Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage

The Dry Heart

The Little Virtues

"The hauntingly beautiful epistolary novel from 'a glowing light of modern Italian literature' (New York Times Book Review). At the heart of Happiness As Such is an absence, an abyss that draws everyone nearer to its edge, created by the departure of a family's wayward only son, Michele, who has fled from Italy to England to escape the dangers and threats of his radical political ties. This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him; his sister Angelica writes to him too; so does Mara, his former lover, who gave birth to a child who could be his own. Left to clean up Michele's mess, his family and friends complain and commiserate, making mistakes and missteps, attempting to cope in the only ways that they know how. With a few brushstrokes, Natalia Ginzburg can flesh out an entire existence and all its pitfalls and disappointments with unmatched clarity. One of Natalia Ginzburg's finest achievements, Happiness As Such is an experimental, wise, raw, comic novel, written in powerful prose that cuts to the bone with surgical precision"--

Happiness, as Such

Cesare Garboli

Italiensk forfatters erindringer fra barndom og ungdom i Italien under fascismen

Lessico famigliare

All Our Yesterdays

Road to the City

One of Ginzburg's finest novels, 'Voices in the Evening'('Le Voci della sera') was first published in its original Italian in 1961.

Voices in the Evening

Natalia Ginzburg, one of Italy's great writers, introduced A Family Lexicon, her most celebrated work, with an unusual disclaimer: “The places, events and people are all real. I have invented nothing. Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy everything thus invented.”A Family Lexicon re-creates with extraordinary objectivity the small world of a family enduring some of the most difficult years of the twentieth century, the period from the rise of Mussolini through World War II (Ginzburg's first husband, who was a member of the resistance, was killed by the Nazis) and its immediate aftermath. Every family has its store of phrases and sayings by which it maintains its sense of what it means to be a family. Such sayings and stories lie at the heart of a great novel about family and history.

Family Lexicon

Léxico familiar

Sagittarius

Two novellas about domestic life, isolation, and the passing of time by one of the finest Italian writers of the twentieth century. Carmine, an architect, and Ivana, a translator, lived together long ago and even had a child, but the child died, and their relationship fell apart, and Carmine married Ninetta, and their child is Dodò, who Carmine feels is a little dull, and these days Carmine is still spending every evening with Ivana, but Ninetta has nothing to say about that. Family, the first of these two novellas from the 1970s, is an examination, at first comic, then progressively dark, about how time passes and life goes on and people circle around the opportunities they had missed, missing more as they do, until finally time is up. Borghesia, about a widow who keeps acquiring and losing the Siamese cats she hopes will keep her company in her loneliness, explores similar ground, along with the confusions of feeling and domestic life that came with the loosening social strictures of the 1970s. “She remembered saying that there were three things in life you should always refuse,” thinks one of Natalia Ginzburg’s characters, beginning to age out of youth: “Hypocrisy, resignation, and unhappiness. But it was impossible to shield yourself from those three things. Life was full of them and there was no holding them back.”

Family and Borghesia

Angus Davidson

Caro Michele

The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg

Escritos entre 1944 e 1962, situados entre o ensaio e a autobiografia, os onze relatos de As pequenas virtudes são um marco da escrita memorialística do século XX. Sem idealizações nem sentimentalismos, As pequenas virtudes é fruto de uma prosa límpida, aliada ao vigor típico dos escritores que, ao falar de coisas simples, revelam as questões humanas mais profundas. Nestes onze textos, a escritora italiana Natalia Ginzburg não faz delimitações entre as dimensões social e histórica, construindo uma obra singular e de raro afeto. O livro é dividido em duas partes. A primeira se atém a deslocamentos — como o período em que a autora morou em Londres — e a retratos de duas figuras centrais em sua vida: o poeta Cesare Pavese, de quem ela foi amiga, e Gabriele Baldini, seu segundo marido. Na segunda, figuram ensaios poderosos, como "O filho do homem", uma avaliação das sequelas da guerra recém-terminada; "O meu ofício", em que Ginzburg explora as relações entre escrita e verdade íntima; e o texto que dá título a este volume, um elogio extraordinário às verdadeiras grandezas humanas. Breve e imenso, simples e original, As pequenas virtudes é um livro inesquecível. Ao retratar uma vida marcada por perdas, desterros e humildes alegrias, Natalia Ginzburg constrói uma obra luminosa, cheia de carinho e de genuíno amor às pessoas e às palavras. "Uma lição de literatura." — Italo Calvino "Com lucidez e uma valentia a toda prova, Natalia Ginzburg nos mostra seus personagens quando não eram heróis nem vítimas; quando eram falíveis, quando era possível amá-los menos. E por isso os amamos mais." — Alejandro Zambra "Ginzburg é inconfundível. Suas observações são rápidas e exatas, geralmente irradiadas através de humor indisciplinado e satírico. Sua voz é pura, fascinante, elegantemente moldada pela autoridade de uma inteligência poderosa." — The New York Review of Books

As pequenas virtudes

Arguably one of Italy’s greatest contemporary writers, Natalia Ginzburg has been best known in America as a writer’s writer, quiet beloved of her fellow wordsmiths. This collection of personal essays chosen by the eminent American writer Lynne Sharon Schwartz from four of Ginzburg’s books written over the course of Ginzburg’s lifetime was a many-years long project for Schwartz. These essays are deeply felt, but also disarmingly accessible. Full of self-doubt and searing insight, Ginzburg is merciless in her attempts to describe herself and her world—and yet paradoxically, her self-deprecating remarks reveal her deeper confidence in her own eye and writing ability, as well as the weight and nuance of her exploration of the conflict between humane values and bureaucratic rigidity.

and other selected essays of

A Place to Live

A medio camino entre el ensayo y la autobiografía, “Las pequeñas virtudes” reúne once textos de tema diverso que comparten una escritura instintiva, radical, una mirada comprometida llana y conclusivamente humana. La guerra y su mordedura atroz de miedo y pobreza, el recuerdo estremecedor y bellamente sostenido de Cesare Pavese y la experiencia intrincada de ser mujer y madre son algunas de las historias de una historia–personal y colectiva–que Natalia Ginzburg ensambla magistralmente, en estas páginas de turbadora belleza, con una reflexión sagaz siempre atenta al otro, arco vital y testimonio del oficio–vocación irrenunciable, orgánica–de escribir.

Las pequeñas virtudes

Iste Böyle Oldu

Probes the lives of Lucrezia, mother of five, lover of many; of her good-natured, long-suffering husband Piero, who struggles to keep their family together; and of Giuseppe, setting out to seek a new life in America

The City and the House

Two novellas about family life and fraudsters by one of the twentieth century's best Italian novelists. Valentino and Sagittarius are two of Natalia Ginzburg’s most celebrated works: tales of love, hope, and delusion that are full of her characteristic mordant humor, keen psychological insight, and unflinching moral realism. Valentino is the spoiled child of doting parents, who have no doubt that their handsome young son will prove “a man of consequence.” Nothing that Valentino does—his nights out on the town, his failed or incomplete classes—suggests there is any ground for that confidence, and Valentino’s sisters view their parents and brother with a mixture of bitterness, stoicism, and bemusement. Everything becomes that much more confused when, out of the blue, Valentino finds an enterprising, wealthy, and strikingly ugly wife, who undertakes to support not just him but the whole family. Sagittarius is another story of misplaced confidence recounted by a wary daughter, whose mother, a grass widow with time on her hands, moves to the suburbs, eager to find new friends. Brassy, bossy, and perpetually dissatisfied, especially when it comes to her children, she strikes up a friendship with the mysterious Scilla, and soon the two women are planning to open an art gallery. But knowing better than everyone, it turns out, is not that different from knowing nothing at all.

Natalia Ginzburg

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