All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
It was incredible how fear and danger never produced ignoble words but always true ones, words that were torn from your very heart.
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.
At the heart of the novel is a concern with experiences that both deepen and deaden existence: adultery and air raids, neighbourhood quarrels and bombings. With her signature clear-eyed wit, Ginzburg asks how we can act with integrity when faced with catastrophe, and how we can love well.
REVIEWS
“One of the Great Italian Writers of the 20th Century.”—The New York Times
"Clarity, precision and wit mark the work of Natalia Ginzburg." — The New York Times Book Review
"Ginzburg [was] famous for her ability to conjure up a mixed emotional atmosphere, poignant yet unsentimental." —The New Yorker
"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
"I wish more people would read the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg." — Mary Gordon, Mother Jones
"Natalia Ginzburg must surely be one of literature’s most provocative and moving writers." — Elle magazine
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with French flaps
Publisher: Daunt
ISBN: 978-1914198236
Pages: 418