All Our Yesterdays

From “one of the most distinguished writers of modern Italy” (New York Review of Books), a classic novel of society in the midst of a war. "A panoramic, richly satisfying story of two Italian families as their lives are inexorably shaped by the encroaching war… A terrific discovery"  (Jewish Chronicle).

"It was as if her writing was a very important secret that I had been waiting all my life to discover... her words seemed to express something completely true about my experience of living and about life."  -   Sally Rooney

This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from 1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief. In the foreground are the members of two families. One is rich, the other is not. 

In All Our Yesterdays, as in all of Natalia Ginzburg’s novels, terrible things happen - suicide, murder, air raids, and bombings. But seemingly less overwhelming events, like a family quarrel, adultery, or a deception, are given equal space, as if to say that, to a victim, adultery and air raids can be equally maiming. All Our Yesterdays gives a sharp portrait of a society hungry for change but betrayed by war.

"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."  - New York Times Book Review

During the period described in the novel, Natalia Ginzburg was married to the writer Leone Ginzburg. Because of his underground activities, he was interned under Mussolini’s reign, along with his family, in a restricted area in the Abruzzi. When the Ginzburgs later moved to Rome, Leone was arrested and tortured by the fascists, and killed, leavin