Natalia Ginzburg’s writings reveal the labor of this writer to regain a sense of reality after war, what Italo Calvino called “the crisis of the real.” The writing voices and styles of Ginzburg, and of Levi, who were peers, emerged from their experiences of the Second World War and in the experience of being Italian and Jewish. Ginzburg’s experience of gender, family relations, internal exile (confino) with her husband Leone, and an increased engagement in politics crystallized distinct aspects of her writing during the war and in the post-war period. In her tone, style, diction, and themes, she created the imperfect reality she sought, reflected in the demand for truth exercised in her personal response to and relationship with narrative craft. The unique experiences of Ginzburg and Levi reveal how each found in writing the means to express their distinct realities in literary works produced during and after the war.