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[...] Its stakes are as high as the most cataclysmic crisis of the twentieth century, and as low as the marriage of one young woman, the fate of one family dog. As readers of this novel, we come to see and feel the inextricable relations between the inner and outer worlds of human beings. Ginzburg'…

[...] as readers, we have the chance to see a few of these people, under unimaginable pressure, with chaos and violence everywhere around them, responding with transcendent and unforgettable moral beauty. These are not people born with special moral qualities, people who find it easy to be brave an…

“Yes, Wladyslaw, yes,” Mari said. She was very tired. From the depths of her exhaustion, where she no longer had the strength to follow what he was saying, she remarked that he had undoubtedly been very beautiful.

He answered gravely. “Very. I was so beautiful that people stopped on the street a…

They never asked, “Were you able to work today?” Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they’d gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected—those often long periods when a person can’t see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.

Pursuing her work in blessed seclusion, free from interference; molding and playing with all sorts of materials, a game that all at once, capriciously, could become irresistible and crowd out all other activity. Enjoying a sudden burst of practical energy and repairing everything broken in the hous…