First published 1962
Natalia Ginzburg believed children should be taught the great virtues, not the small ones. Generosity over thrift. Courage over caution. A love of truth over shrewdness. This collection gathers her finest and best-known short essays, moving across the subjects that shaped her life and thinking. She writes about losing her friend Cesare Pavese. She writes about the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband were held under forced residence during Fascist rule. She writes about what World War II left behind that cannot be erased. She writes about silence, about her work as a writer, about a pair of worn-out shoes. Each essay carries the same quality: a spare, wry style that earns its weight without ornamentation. Ginzburg writes as someone who survived real losses and kept looking clearly at the world afterward. Readers come away with a sharper sense of what actually matters in a life, and a model for how to say so plainly.
Genres: biography, essays, literary-criticism, 20th-century, memoir, european-literature
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, meditative, reflective, thought-provoking, wry
Tropes: essay-collection, historical-witness, personal-reflection
Setting: Abruzzi, Italy
Period: World War II, Fascist era, 20th century
110 pages · Paperback · Arcade Publishing
Content warnings: death, war