A Place to Live

A Place to Live is a wide-ranging collection from one of the foremost Italian writers of the 20th century. With an unerring eye and unparalleled eloquence, Natalia Ginzburg observes everything around her, sparing no one — least of all herself. In these essays, most published here in English for the first time, Ginzburg writes honestly and insightfully about being a writer and mother, being displaced during World War II, and experiencing deprivation in postwar Italy. Some of these essays are travel or mood pieces in which the author uses a particular place or season to evoke interior landscapes. The longest essay, recalling a case in which the government took an infant girl away from her adoptive parents, reveals the fusion of Ginzburg’s life and work.