[...] 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's novels manage not only to accommodate, but to place into a meaningful relationship, the intimate lives of fictional characters and the radical social and political changes unfolding around them. [...]