Natalia Ginzburg

(1916 - 1991)

Using the pseudonym Alessandra Tornimparte, Natalia Ginzburg published her first book, The Road to the City, at the age of twenty-six after her friend Cesare Pavese wrote her a postcard telling her to “stop having children and write a book that is better than mine.” She and her husband Leone had previously edited an anti-Fascist newspaper in Rome until Leone was tortured to death in 1944. Her later novels won the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. In 1983 she was elected to the Italian parliament, where she served until four years before her death.