Each of the two novellas is narrated by a young woman who is in some way betrayed by, or the betrayer of, romantic love.

The hauntingly beautiful epistolary novel from “a glowing light of modern Italian literature” (New York Times Book Review) Longlisted for the PEN Translation Award At the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence—an abyss that pulls everyone to its brink—created by a family’s only son, Michele, who has fled from Italy to England to escape the dangers and threats of his radical political ties. This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him; his sister Angelica writes, missing him; so does Mara, his former lover, telling him about the birth of her son who may be his own. Left to clean up Michele’s mess, his family and friends complain, commiserate, tease, and grieve, struggling valiantly with the small and large calamities of their interconnected lives. Natalia Ginzburg's most beloved book in Italy and one of her finest achievements, Happiness, as Such is an original, wise, raw, comic novel that cuts to the bone.

From one of Italy’s greatest writers, a stunning novel “filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation” (Colm Tóibín) After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel’s narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town’s history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: “Why has everything been ruined?”

"... written in the 1940's by eminent Italian novelist Ginzburg (Valentino and Sagittarius: Two Novellas; Family; Family: and Borghesia, Two Novellas, 1988, etc.). Here, Ginzburg explores the bleak hearts of two country girls--one who betrays her true love for bourgeois life, the other a lonely young woman who is betrayed. In "The Road to the City," Delia is one of five country kids who grew up "like weeds." She is 17, and dreams of marrying and running off to the city as her sister did at 17. In the meantime, to escape her mother's screeching and her father's sullen neglect, she takes the dusty road to the city almost every day. Accompanied by a brother and her sweetly mysterious cousin Nini, with whom she grew up, she sits in cafes and wanders the streets until the lights come up and she has to go home. Delia notes that Nini is different from his adopted family. He reads incessantly, and drinks. When he takes a job in a factory and moves in with a city woman, Delia begins to realize how much he intrigues her. Soon, however, she is pregnant by a country doctor's son. She cares nothing for the fat, stolid chap--but she marries him anyway, seduced by the promise of rich clothes and an apartment in the city. Meanwhile, Nini, who has confessed his love, dies heartbroken in a squalid room. At the start of the second novella, "The Dry Heart," a "simple country girl" announces that "I shot him between the eyes." Instead of the languor of the first country girl, this unnamed young woman suffered from a naked loneliness that impelled her to marry a rich, 40-ish city man. Although she told herself it didn't matter that he didn't love her, his indifference finally drove her to murder after their baby daughter died. Early work from Ginzburg, with all the hallmarks--understatement, honesty tinged with sadness--of her superb mature style."--Kirkus