“When
I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along
streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that
are hers.” – Natalia
Ginzburg
Born in Italy on this date in 1916, Ginzburg’s
writings focused on family relationships, politics during and after Italy’s
Fascist years, and philosophy. A
novelist, short story writer and dramatist, she also was active in Italian
politics and wrote a number of hard-hitting and widely circulated political and
social essays.
Ardently anti-Facist, she and her
first husband Leone secretly edited an anti-Fascist newspaper until their
discovery and his subsequent death in captivity. For two years during the war she and their
children were mostly in hiding until the Allied victory.
Following WWII, she wrote many of
her two-dozen books and plays, winning the coveted Bagutta Prize for The Manzoni Family, and Italy’s highest
literary award, the Strega Prize, for Family
Sayings. Among her best-known plays
are The Advertisement and The Wrong Door, also the title of a
complete collection of her dramatic works. 
Most of her works were translated
into English, earning critical acclaim in both Great Britain and America. In 1991, shortly before her death, she was
elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences. “When I write something I
usually think it is very important and that I am a very fine writer,” she wrote
in The Little Virtues – a collection
of her best-known short essays. “The
important thing," she said, "is to be convinced that this really is your vocation, your
profession, something you will do all your life.”
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