Natalia Ginzburg's Books

The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

From the introduction by Paul Lewis --

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Page Count

105

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802099203

ISBN 13

9780802099204

It's Hard to Talk about Yourself

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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It's Hard to Talk about Yourself

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Ginzburg's marriage to Leone Ginzburg, who met his death at the hands of the Nazis for his anti-fascist activities, and her work for the Einaudi publishing house placed her squarely in the center of Italian political and cultural life. But whether writing about the Turin of her childhood, the Abruzzi countryside where her family was interned during World War II, or contemporary Rome, Ginzburg never shied away from the traumas of history - even if she approached them only indirectly, through the mundane details and catastrophes of personal life."--Jacket.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226296881

ISBN 13

9780226296883

A Place to Live

and other selected essays of

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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A Place to Live

and other selected essays of

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Seven Stories Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609800303

ISBN 13

9781609800307

All Our Yesterdays

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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All Our Yesterdays

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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. This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from 1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief. In the foreground are the members of two families. One is rich, the other is not. In All Our Yesterdays, as in all of Ms. Ginzburg’s novels, terrible things happen—suicide, murder, air raids, and bombings. But seemingly less overwhelming events, like a family quarrel, adultery, or a deception, are given equal space, as if to say that, to a victim, adultery and air raids can be equally maiming. All Our Yesterdays gives a sharp portrait of a society hungry for change, but betrayed by war. During the period described in the novel, Natalia Ginzburg was married to the writer Leone Ginzburg. Because of his underground activities, he was interned under Mussolini’s reign, along with his family, in a restricted area in the Abruzzi. When the Ginzburgs later moved to Rome, Leone was arrested and tortured by the fascists, and killed, leaving Natalia alone to raise her three children. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Page Count

332

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628728116

ISBN 13

9781628728118

Family Lexicon

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Family Lexicon

By: Natalia Ginzburg

A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking—when he isn’t provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini’s Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war. The Levis are, among other things, unshakeable anti-fascists. That will complicate their lives. Family Lexicon is about a family and language—and about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination. The book takes the shape of a novel, yet everything is true. “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 [it],” Ginzburg tells us at the start. “The places, events, and people are all real.”

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241

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1590178386

ISBN 13

9781590178386

The Little Virtues

Essays

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Little Virtues

Essays

By: Natalia Ginzburg

In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.' — The New York Times Book Review

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Page Count

129

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628729023

ISBN 13

9781628729023

Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

This collection brings together a variety of critical perspectives on Ginzburg's work for an English-speaking audience. What emerges is a nuanced and complex portrait of Ginzburg and her work.

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Page Count

282

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080204722X

ISBN 13

9780802047229

The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) is today recognized as one of the foremost woman writers to emerge from twentieth-century Italy. The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg brings together in English translation for the first time the eight short stories that Ginzburg wrote between 1933 and 1965. These early works are significant in the context of Ginzburg's wider repertoire. The key themes and ideas occurring therein would come to characterize much of her later work, particularly in terms of her exploration of the difficulties implicit in developing and sustaining meaningful human relationships. Her short stories also provide intriguing insight into the development of her trademark literary style. Including an introduction by the translator and extensive contributions from Alan Bullock, Emeritus Professor of Italian at the University of Leeds, The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg encourages a deeper understanding of Ginzburg's life's work and compliments those other collections and individual works which are already widely available in English.

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Page Count

105

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1442660120

ISBN 13

9781442660120

The Wrong Door

The Complete Plays of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Wrong Door

The Complete Plays of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Bringing together the eleven plays Ginzburg wrote between 1965 and the months before her death, this volume directs attention to Ginzburg's unique talent as a dramatist.

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Page Count

377

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802098487

ISBN 13

9780802098481

Voices in the Evening

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Voices in the Evening

By: Natalia Ginzburg

From one of Italy’s greatest writers, a stunning novel “filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation” (Colm Tóibín) After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel’s narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town’s history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: “Why has everything been ruined?”

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Page Count

119

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811231011

ISBN 13

9780811231015

The Manzoni Family

A Novel

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Manzoni Family

A Novel

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Winner of the Bagutta Prize, The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro Manzoni—celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)—and the women of his life. The dynastic tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giulia, the mother whom the young Alessandro Manzoni found in Paris after she had abandoned him as an infant. Following her, there is Enrichetta, the woman he and his mother chose to be his wife, and the many children she had by him until her death; literary friends from the beau monde in Italy and Paris; and Alessandro's second wife, Teresa, and her children. Against the background of Napoleonic occupation, the reestablishment of Austrian hegemony, and the stirrings of the revolutionary urge for unification and independence, Ginzburg gracefully weaves the story of the Manzoni dynasty, a family that seems to grow autonomously around the life of the writer, effortlessly incorporating the epic tumult and emotion of the age. Ginzburg explores this fascinating true story and celebrated author with the elegance that has assured her rightful place among history’s acclaimed literary titans.

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Page Count

360

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628728981

ISBN 13

9781628728989

The Little Virtues

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Little Virtues

By: Natalia Ginzburg

“As far as the education of children is concerned,” states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, “I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. “A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg’s magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

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Page Count

184

Publisher

Arcade

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611457971

ISBN 13

9781611457971

Happiness, as Such

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Happiness, as Such

By: Natalia Ginzburg

The hauntingly beautiful epistolary novel from “a glowing light of modern Italian literature” (New York Times Book Review) Longlisted for the PEN Translation Award At the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence—an abyss that pulls everyone to its brink—created by a family’s 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, missing him; so does Mara, his former lover, telling him about the birth of her son who may be his own. Left to clean up Michele’s mess, his family and friends complain, commiserate, tease, and grieve, struggling valiantly with the small and large calamities of their interconnected lives. Natalia Ginzburg's most beloved book in Italy and one of her finest achievements, Happiness, as Such is an original, wise, raw, comic novel that cuts to the bone.

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Page Count

159

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811228002

ISBN 13

9780811228008

The Wrong Door

The Complete Plays of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Wrong Door

The Complete Plays of Natalia Ginzburg

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Bringing together the eleven plays Ginzburg wrote between 1965 and the months before her death, this volume directs attention to Ginzburg's unique talent as a dramatist.

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Page Count

377

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802098487

ISBN 13

9780802098481

A Place to Live

and other selected essays of

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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A Place to Live

and other selected essays of

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Seven Stories Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609800303

ISBN 13

9781609800307

The Things We Used to Say

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Things We Used to Say

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from the Italian by Judith Woolf. A brilliant new translation of a classic by one of Italy's finest writers.

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Page Count

234

Publisher

Arcade Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1559704675

ISBN 13

9781559704670

The Things We Used to Say

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Things We Used to Say

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from the Italian by Judith Woolf. A brilliant new translation of a classic by one of Italy's finest writers.

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234

Publisher

Arcade Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1559704675

ISBN 13

9781559704670

It's Hard to Talk about Yourself

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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It's Hard to Talk about Yourself

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Page Count

214

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226296881

ISBN 13

9780226296883

The City and the House

A Novel

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The City and the House

A Novel

By: Natalia Ginzburg

The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers—and perhaps the father of one of her children—is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise. What was once rooted, local, and specific has become general and common, a matter of strangers and of pointless arrivals and departures. And at the edge of the novel are people no longer able to form any sustained or sustaining relationships. Here, once again, Ginzburg pulls us through a thrilling and true exploration of the disintegration of family in modern society. She handles a host of characters with a deft touch and her typical impressionist hand, and offers a story full of humanity, passion, and keen perception.

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Page Count

224

Publisher

Arcade

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611456916

ISBN 13

9781611456912

Family and Borghesia

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Family and Borghesia

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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.”

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Page Count

129

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681375087

ISBN 13

9781681375083

Family Lexicon

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Family Lexicon

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Page Count

241

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1590178386

ISBN 13

9781590178386

The Dry Heart

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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The Dry Heart

By: Natalia Ginzburg

Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.” As the tale—a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness—proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?

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New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811228797

ISBN 13

9780811228794

Family and Borghesia

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Family and Borghesia

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Page Count

129

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681375095

ISBN 13

9781681375090

Valentino and Sagittarius

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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Valentino and Sagittarius

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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.

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Page Count

137

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681374757

ISBN 13

9781681374758

No Way

By: Natalia Ginzburg

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No Way

By: Natalia Ginzburg

No Way is a very short novel, bare and bleak as bones. Its ominous English title is appropriate enough for its mood, except for the easy current slanginess of that phrase, mouthed by so many of us now on trivial occasions.

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Page Count

176

Publisher

New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Published Date

ISBN 10

0151676747

ISBN 13

9780151676743

Book's by Natalia Ginzburg

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