Natalia Ginzburg.

The daughter of prominent anatomist Giuseppe Levi, Natalia Levi was born in Palermo, Sicily, on 14 July 1916. Her father, a Jewish academic, instilled a love of learning. She grew up in Turin, where she attended the University of Turin. Growing up in fascist Italy, she was surrounded by intellectual discourse at home. Encouraged by her family and by friends including Elsa Morante and Cesare Pavese, she started writing at a young age.

Ginzburg’s first stories appeared in the 1930s, but her breakthrough came in 1963 with Lessico famigliare Family Sayings, which won the Strega Prize. The book is a memoir of her family life under fascism. She also wrote plays, such as Ti ho sposato per allegria I Married You for Fun in 1967. She acted in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew 1964, playing Mary of Bethany. Her friendships with Pasolini and Elsa Morante were central to her intellectual world.

In 1938, she married Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish anti-fascist activist. The couple had three children: Carlo, Andrea, and Alessandra. Leone died in prison in 1944. After his death, she married Gabriele Baldini, a professor and translator, with whom she had two more children, Susanna and Antonio. Baldini died in 1969. She maintained close friendships with writers Elsa Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Lessico famigliare 1963 is considered a masterpiece of autobiographical fiction. Ginzburg also received the Bagutta Prize and the Charles Veillon prize, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her work has influenced later Italian writers, including Elena Ferrante. She died of cancer in Rome in 1991, but her literary reputation endures.