Family Lexicon Natalia Ginzburg

Family Lexicon

Author: Natalia Ginzburg
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Book Title
Family Lexicon
Author
Natalia Ginzburg
ISBN
9781590178386
A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking--when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini's Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war. The Levis are, among other things, unshakeable anti-fascists. That will complicate their lives. Family Lexicon is about a family and language--and about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination. The book takes the shape of a novel, yet everything is true. "Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy it]," Ginzburg tells us at the start. "The places, events, and people are all real."Binding Type: PaperbackAuthor: Natalia GinzburgPublisher: New York Review of BooksPublished: 04/25/2017ISBN: 9781590178386Pages: 224Weight: 0.52lbsSize: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60dReview Citations: Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2017Publishers Weekly 02/13/2017
A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction

An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking--when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini's Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war. The Levis are, among other things, unshakeable anti-fascists. That will complicate their lives.

Family Lexicon is about a family and language--and about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination. The book takes the shape of a novel, yet everything is true. "Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy it]," Ginzburg tells us at the start. "The places, events, and people are all real."

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Natalia Ginzburg
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 04/25/2017
ISBN: 9781590178386
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2017
Publishers Weekly 02/13/2017
A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction

An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking--when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini's Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war. The Levis are, among other things, unshakeable anti-fascists. That will complicate their lives.

Family Lexicon is about a family and language--and about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination. The book takes the shape of a novel, yet everything is true. "Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy it]," Ginzburg tells us at the start. "The places, events, and people are all real."

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Natalia Ginzburg
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 04/25/2017
ISBN: 9781590178386
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2017
Publishers Weekly 02/13/2017