Happiness, as Such

By Natalia Ginzburg
Translated from Italian by Minna Zallman Proctor
New Directions Publishing, 2019

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Description

At the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence--an abyss that pulls everyone to its brink--created by a family's only son, Michele, who has fled from Italy to England to escape the dangers and threats of his radical political ties. This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him; his sister Angelica writes, missing him; so does Mara, his former lover, telling him about the birth of her son who may be his own. Left to clean up Michele's mess, his family and friends complain, commiserate, tease, and grieve, struggling valiantly with the small and large calamities of their interconnected lives.

Natalia Ginzburg's most beloved book in Italy and one of her finest achievements, Happiness, as Such is an original, wise, raw, comic novel that cuts to the bone.

Read an excerpt from LitHub here

Reviews

“A swiftly moving blend of dialogue and letters, the novel speaks to Ginzburg’s remarkable range as a writer: beneath the currents of humor and wit is a subtle work of insight and feeling. Another masterpiece from one of the finest postwar Italian writers.” -Kirkus (starred review)

“With her characteristic sharpness and precision, Ginzburg dissects a stubborn truth: why is love of family and friends so often a terribly difficult and even futile pursuit? Witnessing the ordinary but broken and wayward characters in Happiness as Such struggling to connect and failing to do so, again and again, is a wrenching experience. Reading her famously crisp but powerful prose is, as always with this great writer, an uplifting one.” -Sigrid Nunez

About The Author

Natalia Ginzburg (1916–1991), “who authored twelve books and two plays; who, because of anti-Semitic laws, sometimes couldn’t publish under her own name; who raised five children and lost her husband to Fascist torture; who was elected to the Italian parliament as an independent in her late sixties—this woman does not take her present conditions as a given. She asks us to fight back against them, to be brave and resolute. She instructs us to ask for better, for ourselves and for our children” (Belle Boggs, The New Yorker).

Translator Minna Zallman Proctor is the author of Landslide and the editor of The Literary Review. She won the PEN/Renato Poggioli Award for her translation of Federigo Tozzi’s Love in Vain.

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