Secrets and Puzzles: Silence and the Unsaid in Contemporary Italian Writing

"Four major Italian writers raised in the shadow of fascism-Cesare Pavese, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg and Francesca Sanvitale-are the focus of this examination of the 'unsaid' in modern Italian narrative. Post-war and free of official censorship, these writers nonetheless show signs of constraint and omission in their work. Are the gaps a form of concealment? In this lucid and wide-ranging study, which embraces key areas of modern literary investigation-Holocaust writing, political guilt, autobiography, feminism and film theory-the author addresses the question of self-censorship and traces its course in contemporary Italian writing."

Nicoletta Simborowski is Lecturer in Italian at Hertford College and Magdalen College, Oxford.