The Little Virtues

Author(s): Natalia Ginzburg

Essays

“As far as the education of children is concerned,” states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, “I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist ru≤ or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.  “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.” —The New York Times Book Review


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781911547143
  • : Daunt Books
  • : Daunt Books
  • : March 2018
  • : {"length"=>["19.8"], "width"=>["12.9"], "units"=>["Centimeters"]}
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Natalia Ginzburg
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 854.912
  • : 171
  • : DNF
  • : Dick Davis