SUMMER BOOKS Lessico famigliare

By Daniela Gross

Family Sayings – as it translates in English – is a semi-biographical, ironic, and delicate chronicle of the daily life of an Italian Jewish family between 1920-1950. Natalia Ginzburg tells us about her father, the renowned histologist Giuseppe Levi, their friends, their habits, and their linguistic uses. In these pages there are many tragic events, such as the death in jail of her husband Leone Ginzburg, a noted anti-fascist, or the suicide of the writer Cesare Pavese. But above all, this amazing book – published in 1963 – is full of a persistent joy of life and is evidence of an extraordinary inner strength.

Lessico famigliare
By Natalia Ginzburg
Einaudi
218 pp.