The Wrong Door: The Complete Plays of Natalia Ginzburg

by Natalia Ginzburg, Wendell Ricketts (Translator)

The Wrong Door is the first English-language translation of the complete plays of Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991). Bringing together the eleven plays Ginzburg wrote between 1965 and the months before her death, this volume directs attention to Ginzburg's unique talent as a dramatist.

Ginzburg's plays, like her novels and short stories, are incisive, finely tuned studies of family drama, of the breakdown of relations between the sexes, and of the tribulations of Italian domestic life. The plays showcase Ginzburg's fearless social commentary, her stark and darkly comic observations of Italian life, and her prescient analyses of the socio-economic changes that have transformed modern Italy. Along the way, Ginzburg creates memorable female characters in a series of fascinating roles. In this fluent and faithful translation, Wendell Ricketts highlights Ginzburg's scalpel-sharp dialogue and lays bare the existential absurdities that lie at the heart of her plays.

Including an introduction by the translator and two essays by Ginzburg on her approach to the theatre, The Wrong Door adds a new dimension to the literary portrait of one of Italy's most significant modernist writers.

Genres: Canon

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. An activist, for a time in the 1930s she belonged to the Italian Communist Party. In 1983 she was elected to Parliament from Rome as an Independent.

Reviews

[Seingalt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of Ginzburg's plays I like especially (and have read more than once) Ti ho sposato per allegria, Paese di mare, L'intervista, and Il cormorano. In this hardcover, an excellent value, there's also a lovely prefatory note by Ginzburg herself, as well as an introduction, not pedantic and off-putting as such intros often are, by a professional critic.

Ginzburg's plays are also excellent learning aids for anyone studying Italian, as they are light and airy, on the surface at least, and such great fun to read that you forget you're learning (and of course you can really learn only when you don't realize that's what you're doing).

[Lara Facchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

La Ginzburg che non ti aspetti: commedie al vetriolo, che denunciano l'ipocrisia borghese, la disillusione del matrimonio e le diffuse meschinità presenti all'interno della coppia, accolte con indifferenza, rassegnazione e senso di impotenza. Non ne esce bene nessuno, la scrittura è asettica ed apparentemente distante: sembra di guardare le vicende narrate come se il lettore fosse fuori da un vetro (di uno zoo? di una teca? di una cella?), eppure le storie narrate sbugiardano ancora oggi le nostre quotidiane bassezze. Una scoperta. Consigliatissimo.