Voices in the Evening
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Description
After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel's narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town's history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: "Why has everything been ruined?"
Product Details
Price
$14.95
$13.90
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
May 04, 2021
Pages
144
Dimensions
5.2 X 8.0 X 0.4 inches | 0.36 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811231008
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Natalia Ginzburg was born in Palermo, Italy in 1916. She 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. Modest and intensely reserved, Ginzburg never shied away from the traumas of history, whether writing about the Turin of her childhood, the Abruzzi countryside, or contemporary Rome--all the while approaching those traumas only indirectly, through the mundane details and catastrophes of personal life. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. She wrote acclaimed translations of both Proust and Flaubert into Italian. She died in Rome in 1991.
D. M. Low (1890-1972) was a British translator of Italian literature and biographer of Edward Gibbon.
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022-2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
Reviews
I'm utterly entranced by Ginzburg's style - her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear.--Maggie Nelson
Her sentences have great precision and clarity, and I learn a lot when I read her.--Zadie Smith
Sharp and lively.--Lydia Davis
Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.--Rachel Cusk
The concepts, emotions and characters in her books are complex and unforgettable.--Laurie Anderson "New York Times"
As deceptively diffuse as it is meticulously observed, Ginzburg's novel is a gem.-- "Kirkus (starred)"
Ginzburg's efficient, lyrical prose and ear for dialogue make for an expansive and beautifully rendered study of individuals and community in wartime. With this latest resurrected masterpiece, the late author's work continues to prove irresistible and relevant.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred)"
Though the political context is important in understanding the nuances of her work, Ginzburg's talent, and how fresh these stories still feel, is in her note-perfect characterizations. The many political frictions offer a context, but it's these imaginary/real people who are front and center.--Mandana Chaffa "Chicago Review of Books"
There is perhaps no greater archivist of the family lexicon than the Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg.--Jess Bergman "Jewish Currents"
Ginzburg is a miniaturist. Her themes are buried in gestures, fragments, absences--not in what is said, but in what is not said....When there are glimpses of happiness in Ginzburg's work, they take root in unlikely places, outside the narrow confines of convention. Voices in the Evening, set in the period immediately after the war, is a portrait of the children of a factory boss as told by Elsa, the factory accountant's daughter, a typically opaque Ginzburgian narrator. Elsa is having a covert love affair with Tommasino, the youngest of the boss's children, and the pair meet every Wednesday in a modest rented room. Ginzburg sketches the parameters of their relationship with typical precision, through an accretion of specifics that accumulate incredible force, humor, and beauty.--Negar Azimi "Bookforum"
Her sentences have great precision and clarity, and I learn a lot when I read her.--Zadie Smith
Sharp and lively.--Lydia Davis
Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.--Rachel Cusk
The concepts, emotions and characters in her books are complex and unforgettable.--Laurie Anderson "New York Times"
As deceptively diffuse as it is meticulously observed, Ginzburg's novel is a gem.-- "Kirkus (starred)"
Ginzburg's efficient, lyrical prose and ear for dialogue make for an expansive and beautifully rendered study of individuals and community in wartime. With this latest resurrected masterpiece, the late author's work continues to prove irresistible and relevant.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred)"
Though the political context is important in understanding the nuances of her work, Ginzburg's talent, and how fresh these stories still feel, is in her note-perfect characterizations. The many political frictions offer a context, but it's these imaginary/real people who are front and center.--Mandana Chaffa "Chicago Review of Books"
There is perhaps no greater archivist of the family lexicon than the Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg.--Jess Bergman "Jewish Currents"
Ginzburg is a miniaturist. Her themes are buried in gestures, fragments, absences--not in what is said, but in what is not said....When there are glimpses of happiness in Ginzburg's work, they take root in unlikely places, outside the narrow confines of convention. Voices in the Evening, set in the period immediately after the war, is a portrait of the children of a factory boss as told by Elsa, the factory accountant's daughter, a typically opaque Ginzburgian narrator. Elsa is having a covert love affair with Tommasino, the youngest of the boss's children, and the pair meet every Wednesday in a modest rented room. Ginzburg sketches the parameters of their relationship with typical precision, through an accretion of specifics that accumulate incredible force, humor, and beauty.--Negar Azimi "Bookforum"