Natalia Ginzburg: A Biography

by Maja Pflug, Sian Williams

This is an affectionate introduction to the life and work of the great Italian writer who made an invaluable contribution to literature, not only with her own work but with the writers she fostered at the Einaudi publishing house -- including Anne Frank, Rosetta Loy, Carlo Emilio Gadda and Vittorio Pratolini. She achieved acclaim with The Things We Used To Say and translated Proust, Flaubert, Duras, and de Maupassant. She died in 1991.

208 pages, Paperback

Published December 31, 2004

Reviews

[Ursula Pflug · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is by my cousin Maja, with whom I stayed in Munich in 1999 when I was there for my grandmother's memorial. I haven't read it because, alas, neither my German nor my Italian are up to scratch. It's a revelation re-meeting overseas cousins, though. She's tall and thin and smart and literary ...and she smokes. Kind of like looking in a mirror... although I have thankfully both given up smoking and been back to Berlin since then.