All Our Yesterdays

In a small town in northern Italy, two large families live in houses facing each other. They are connected by invisible threads of love and grievances, shared beliefs and prejudices, petty quarrels and true friendship. Anna — the youngest of them all — initially observes the tumultuous dramas of her relatives and neighbors as if from the outside. Apathetic by nature, she fears living her own life like an insect — «an insect that has nothing but the little leaf it sits on». Deep down, she dreams of running across rooftops and climbing barricades, bringing the revolution closer with her older brother and his friends, who live with the dream of overthrowing Mussolini's regime. «All Our Yesterdays» (1952) — a coming-of-age novel in the shadow of fascism and war, which, according to Italo Calvino, pairs with another well-known work by Natalia Ginzburg — «Family Lexicon». When war breaks out, with Italy siding with Hitler, the heroes of both books realize that the world is much larger than the street they have known since childhood; they can no longer simply «hold on to their little leaf», but it seems that it is precisely this that gives them the strength to endure the disasters that befall them.