TCLCT February 2021 book club: ’Family Lexicon’ by Natalia Ginzburg

Our book club meets on the third Tuesday of the month to discuss a piece of recently translated literature, usually fiction. Natalia Ginzburg wrote her masterful autobiographical novel Family Lexicon while living in London in the 1960s. Homesick for her Italian family, she summoned them in this celebration of the routines and rituals, in-jokes and insults and, above all, the repeated sayings that make up every family. Our book choice this evening will be introduced by Prof. Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, former Head of Italian at Trinity College Dublin. We are delighted to announce that we will also be joined by the book’s translator, Jenny McPhee. Intimate, enchanting and humorous, Family Lexicon is an unforgettable novel about language, memory, and the lasting power that family holds over all of us. ‘The places, events and people are all real. I have invented nothing.’ ‘Utterly charming’ – The Guardian‘ A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . As direct and clean as if i