Meet the eccentric Levi family, their quirks and daily rituals, remembered through favorite words, dialectal expressions, and idiosyncratic sayings—the kind that always arise among close friends. Giuseppe Levi is an energetic scientist, physician, avid sportsman, and an implacable debater. His wife, Lidia, is a measured and good-natured lover of art, icy showers, and carpandu apples. Their five very different children grow up in a house where the voices of guests—intellectuals, politicians, and artists—never cease to be heard. They all live in Turin in the first half of the 20th century, under Mussolini's rule, and those who disagree with his policies are persecuted and arrested. The freedom-loving Levys—Jews and staunch anti-fascists—don't lose their humor and lighthearted attitude even in the darkest times. They fight for their beliefs and their loved ones, seeking and finding salvation in each other.

'Family Lexicon' (1963) is Natalia Ginzburg's groundbreaking autobiographical novel about the power of language and the nature of memory; the story of her family, told as truthfully as possible, for 'memory is a flexible thing, and books taken from life are often only faint reflections, fragments of what we have seen or heard.'