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{en} Nadia Castronuovo. Natalia Ginzburg: Jewishness as Moral Identity. Leicester, UK : Troubador Pub., 2010.

Abstract

This book explores Ginzburg's Jewishness in her writings. During the Jewish persecution and following the murder of her husband Leone by the Nazis, Ginzburg begins to realise the importance of her Jewish identity, which is not derived from Jewish tradition, culture or religion, but is intimately connected with her own suffering as a Jew, with the suffering and oppression of Jews and of all other victims of oppression, to the extent that even her Catholicism is presented through her view that Christ was a persecuted Jew. Her Jewishness is a moral identity. The book brings together substantial historical background on the period surrounding the Racial Laws and highlights the reactions by Jews and non-Jews to the growing anti-Semitism of the times. In this context, moral identity is also discussed as a facet of Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani's Jewish identity.

Contents

Natalia Ginzburg's Jewishness as moral identity -- Jewishness in Natalia Ginzburg's self-representation : autobiographical writings -- Natalia Ginzburg's Jewishness in her fiction and theatre -- Natalia Ginzburg's Jewishness as expressed in public life -- Jewishness' as narrative history, tradition and moral identity: Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani