Ginzburg, Natalia Levi

Ginzburg, Natalia Levi (nətäl`yə lē`vē gĭn`sbûrg), 1916–91, Italian novelist. Because she and her husband Leone Ginzburg were Jewish, they were confined to a small village from 1940 to 1943; her husband later died in prison. Strongly affected by the pain and disruptions of World War II, she wrote about the war's effects on families. Her understated, yet elegant, style reflects an impatience with artifice and hypocrisy. Her best-known novels are The Road to the City (tr. 1949), The Dry Heart (tr. 1949), and Voices in the Evening (tr. 1963). A number of her translated essays were included in the collection A Place to Live (2001).

Bibliography

See also the autobiographical The Things We Used to Say (tr. 1999); biography by L. M. Picchione (1978).