The Manzoni Family - Softcover

Ginzburg, Natalia

3.44

388 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559700300 ISBN 13: 9781559700306

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 1989

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An epic biography set in ducal Italy and postrevolutionary France focuses on the Manzoni family, beginning with the matriarchal Giulia and ending in 1901

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Review:

Praise for The Manzoni Family:

"As social history, with something of the flavor and immediacy of fiction, this story of a famous family stretching from 1762 to 1907 is interesting and well done. The book skillfully stitches together biographical facts and numerous family letters." Publishers Weekly

"Although Tolstoy maintained that 'happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,' contemporary readers of this work will identify with the illnesses of children, deaths of relatives, and all-too-frequent filial requests for money that confronted Italian literary giant Alessandro Manzoni, author of I Promessi sposi. Based on the family's voluminous correspondence, Ginzburg's portrayal is personal rather than literary, focusing on Manzoni family members; but a vivid picture of 18th- and 19th-century Italy and the literary scene in 19th-century Paris also emerges." Library Journal

"The difference between this family saga and the ordinary family saga is the difference, say, between War and Peace and Dallas." Boston Globe

"Italian novelist Ginzburg uses the epistolary technique to craft a brilliant biography of four generations of a complex, frequently tortured family . . . an extraordinarily moving and evocative book.” Kirkus Reviews

"Original, engrossing, appalling." bestselling author and literary critic Mary McCarthy
Praise for Natalia Ginzburg's work

"Clarity, precision and wit mark the work of Natalia Ginzburg." The New York Times Book Review

"I wish more people would read the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg." Mary Gordon, Mother Jones

"Natalia Ginzburg must surely be one of literature's most provocative and moving writers." Elle magazine

"Realistic, anchored by vivifying detail, crowded with wonderfully vibrant characters, luminous with deep feeling, responsiveness, and sympathy." Publishers Weekly

"Ginzburg draws her readers into her deceptively charming essays with cascades of alluring, everyday detail, then stealthily broaches moral questions of great weight and complexity. Wryly witty, acutely observant, and unfailingly valiant, Ginzburg is a revelation, a spur, and a joy." Booklist

"A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart." The New York Times Book Review

About 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.

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