Nov 15, 2009

The Advertisement | Author Biography

Natalia Ginzburg was born Natalie Levi on July 14, 1916, in Palermo, Italy. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Catholic, but Ginzburg was raised in a non-religious environment. She grew up in Turin, where her father was an anatomy professor at the university.

World War II and the fascist Italian government that instituted severe restrictions on the rights of Jews had a profound effect on Ginzburg’s life. In 1938, the year in which anti-Semitic laws were passed in Italy, she married Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish publisher and antifascist political activist. In 1940 Leone was...