Before starting my PhD at Cambridge, I spent a year in Turin working as an assistant teacher at an Italian high school. With a flexible timetable, I had plenty of free time, which I filled by socialising most nights, wandering around the city by day, and devouring books as if my life depended on it.

By chance, some of my closest friends in Turin were part of a bohemian group I have come to think of as artless artists – painters, writers, thespians, and musicians in name but not in practice. Their days and nights were largely consumed by drinking into the early hours and lamenting their lack of time to pursue their respective crafts. One night, during my first week or so of knowing them, I mentioned my love of reading and walking around the city, and – almost in unison – they all asked whether I had ever read anything by Cesare Pavese. In their view, the way I spent my days echoed the lives of many of his protagonists. As it happens, I had read some of his works during my undergraduate degree, but their collective recommendation prompted me to take him more seriously than I had done back then. So, the next day, I went out in search of his books – a very easy task in Turin, for he is one of the city’s undisputed literary icons.

Born in Piedmont in 1908, Pavese spent most of his life in Turin, though he frequently returned to his birthplace, Santo Stefano Belbo, a small town nestled in the surrounding countryside. Interestingly, the contrast between the city and the countryside plays a significant role in much of his work, reflecting the tension between modernity and tradition, alienation and rootedness. However, it was his texts set primarily in Turin that captured my attention most vividly, particularly La bella estate. This story follows Ginia, a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, as she navigates her way through a bohemian circle while spending much of her time alone, grappling with self-discovery and personal growth. Its resonance with my own experiences in Turin felt almost uncanny.

“His characters often live […] by a sort of yearning for meaningful connection – feelings I found all too familiar when I first arrived in Turin”

From this starting point, I began to immerse myself in Pavese’s works more deeply, discovering how they capture both the beauty and the pain of human existence with striking clarity. His characters often live in a liminal space between hope and disillusionment, their lives punctuated by a sort of yearning for meaningful connection – feelings I found all too familiar when I first arrived in Turin. Living alone for the first time in my life, in a tiny top-floor apartment, I came face to face with the true meaning of solitude in a city. Until then, I had always lived with family or housemates, so the quiet of my new apartment brought with it a strange, yet not entirely unpleasant, solitude. For the first time, I had to confront myself – what brought me joy, what triggered my anxieties, and what I truly valued. It was not always easy, but it was profoundly eye-opening.

I began to realise that, for much of my life, I had been running around trying to socialise as a way to avoid facing myself. This was something Pavese himself understood deeply, and in his diaries, Il mestiere di vivere, he grapples with the tension between the desire for connection and the difficulty of truly understanding oneself. One entry that stayed with me reads: “The whole problem of life is this: how to break one’s solitude, how to communicate with others”.

“Pavese shows us that loneliness is not just something to get through. Instead, it can also be a chance to learn more about ourselves and to grow as individuals”

I soon realised that Pavese’s themes resonated not only with my own experience of navigating a foreign city but also with many of my friends, who had recently embarked on new adventures after graduation. The isolation and yearning in his works capture the struggles of early adulthood, when we are trying to find our place in the world. But these themes do not just apply to those first years after graduation. Whether it is the solitude of late nights in the library, the longing for a home that no longer feels the same, or the challenge of building meaningful relationships in a world that is always changing, Pavese shows us that loneliness is not just something to get through. Instead, it can also be a chance to learn more about ourselves and to grow as individuals.

I will always be grateful to my friends in Turin for reintroducing me to Pavese’s works. His exploration of loneliness, identity, and connection have left a lasting impression on me, and I truly believe that anyone –whether adjusting to life in a new city, tackling the ups and downs of university, or simply searching for meaningful connection – should experience Pavese for themselves.