Perhaps this ought to be considered an essay. It’s often called one and, in fact, I first read it for a course called ‘The Essay’. Nevertheless, it’s filed away with the short stories in my memory, I suppose because it is so rooted in a place, a time, and a set of characters, and because when I think of it, it’s not an idea I remember but the mood of its narrative voice, its geographical details, and the aesthetic effect of its moving final paragraph. It is a story about the years during the fascist period in Italy that Ginzburg and her husband, Jewish communists, were forced into internal exile and lived in the village of Pizzoli, in the mountainous Abruzzo region. It describes the changing seasons, their relationships with the villagers, and the sadness they felt as the snow settled over the mountains. Its beautiful, devastating final paragraph never fails to send shivers up my spine.
First collected as ‘Inverno in Abruzzo’ in Le piccole virtù, Einaudi, 1962, and in English in The Little Virtues, Carcanet, 1995, and then by Daunt Books, 2018. Available to read here
A Personal Anthology 