Natalia Ginzburg – Doyenne of 20th Century Italian Literature: Shoham Smit and Shirley Finzi Loew in Discussion with Jonathan Fine

Novelist, playwright, essayist, and one of the towering figures of 20th-century Italian literature, Natalia Ginzburg was born in Palermo to Giuseppe Levi, a secular Jewish professor of medicine, and Lidia Tanzi, her Catholic mother. Growing up in Turin, their home served as an intellectual salon, shaped by Italian culture and broader European influences.   

During World War II, Ginzburg and her husband, anti-fascist activist Leone Ginzburg, were forced to flee Turin. After his murder by fascist authorities in 1944, she returned to the city and began working at the prestigious Einaudi publishing house, alongside writers such as Italo Calvino and Cesare Pavese.

Rooted in autobiographical experience, Ginzburg’s writing is marked by extraordinary insight and emotional courage, an enduring engagement with memory, and the fragility of everyday life. Alongside her literary output, she was also a committed political activist and served as a member of the Italian Parliament representing the Communist Party.

In a conversation led by writer and translator Jonathan Fine, author Shoham Smit and Italian translator Shirley Finzi Loew will explore Ginzburg’s reflections on family, loss, identity and social class.

This event is part of a collaboration to promote contemporary European literature between the European Union and the International Writers Festival at Mishkenot Sha'ananim.