Description

An Italian family sizable with its routines and rituals crazes pet phrases and stories doubtful comical indispensable comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburgs Family Lexicon Giuseppe Levi the father is a scientist consumed by his work and a mania for hikingwhen he isnt provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing Giuseppe is Jewish married to Lidia a Catholic though neither is religious they live in the industrial city of Turin where as the years pass their children find ways of their own to medicine marriage literature politics It is all very ordinary except that the background to the story is Mussolinis Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war The Levis are among other things unshakeable antifascists That will complicate their lives