Ginzburg grew up in a Jewish intellectual family in Turin in the 1920s and 1930s; her husband Leone Ginzburg was tortured to death by the Fascists. Family Lexicon is her great memoir of that family, told through the catchphrases and tics of her parents and siblings.
It is also a portrait of the city's anti-Fascist circles: Adriano Olivetti, Cesare Pavese, the publisher Einaudi, and Primo Levi all wander in and out of the apartment. Funny, intimate, and a much gentler entry to Turinese intellectual life than Levi.