Among the Italian writers we know, a remarkable number are connected to Piedmont and Turin: both Levis, Primo and Carlo, Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, and most recently Alessandro Baricco. But there are several more we should know, prime among them Cesare Pavese.

Pavese was an enigmatic character, who is better known in Italy for not having joined the Resistance and for having committed suicide in a Turin hotel than for his novels, except the most famous, The Moon and the Bonfires, published in the year of his death, 1950. In England too his suicide loomed large in reviewers’ minds when Among Women Only was first published here in 1953. Perhaps the nihilism of the novel gave some clue to that final act, the TLS suggested. We are meant to be more wary of such connections now, but it is hard to read Among Women Only and disagree.

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