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---with an introduction by Sally Rooney‘It was incredible how fear and danger never produced ignoble words but always true ones, words that were torn from your very heart.’Anna, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in a small town in northern Italy, finds herself pregnant after a brief romance. To save her reputation, she marries an eccentric older family friend, Cenzo Rena, and they move to his village in the south. Their relationship is touched by tragedy and grace as the events of their life in the countryside run parallel to the war and the encroaching threat of fascism – and in their wake, a society dealing with anxiety and grief.At the heart of the novel is a concern with experiences that both deepen and deaden existence: adultery and air raids, neighbourhood quarrels and bombings. With her signature clear-eyed wit, Ginzburg asks how we can act with integrity when faced with catastrophe, and how we can love well.‘It was as if her writing was a very important secret that I had been waiti

At long last she was playing the role she had always dreamt about, that of a mother, full of anxious solicitude, preparing to confide her daughter into the hands of a young man with good intentions, good prospects and a good character.A domineering mother moves from a small town to the suburbs of a city with her daughter and son-in-law, yet soon grows restless with her new life. When she strikes up a friendship with the mysterious Scilla, her world suddenly seems rich with potential and before long, the pair are planning to open an art gallery together.After a series of afternoons spent over coffee granitas in local bars, however, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to Scilla than meets the eye. Class, in all its manifestations and aspirations, is at the heart of Sagittarius, as misplaced confidence and ambition gone awry leads inexorably towards the downfall of a family.‘I’m utterly entranced by Ginzburg’s style – her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay thing