The Things We Used to Say

First edition thus. 8vo. Pp. xiv, 210. Quarter-bound maroon backstrip over beige paper-covered boards, stamped in silver to spine. Jacket design by Abby Kagan. Translated from the Italian and with an introduction by Judith Woolf. With an author's preface and notes at rear. Originally published as Lessico famigliare, by Giulio Einaudi, Turin, 1963. First edition in English under the title Family sayings, in a translation by D.M. Low, was published by Hogarth Press in 1967, and E. P. Dutton in the U.S. A revised edition of this was issued under the Carcanet imprint in 1984.

Winner of the 1963 Strega Prize. Spanning the period from the rise of fascism through WWII and its aftermath, the book asks to be read as fiction, though its author, admitted that it is highly autobiographical. "It seems to give biography a new dimension, new possibilities, and the tired old form of the family chronicle an aspect that is entirely new." –Times Literary Supplement