The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a part of a series by Italian author Giorgio Bassani, centered on Bassani’s hometown of Ferrara. He began publishing The Novel of Ferrara in 1956, and the third installment, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, brought him great acclaim when it was published in 1962. Pulling from his own life, Bassani criticizes the reality of fascism in the novel; like Bassani himself, the narrator goes to jail for his beliefs. The titular garden itself is fictional. The novel was adapted into the Oscar-winning film of the same name, directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1974.

The edition referenced in this study guide was published in 1977 by Quartet Books and translated from Italian by William Weaver.

Content Warning: The source material depicts sexual violence, antisemitism, genocide, and suicide.

Plot Summary

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis portrays the unnamed narrator’s memories from his childhood growing up in the small Jewish community in Ferrara, Italy, until his voluntary isolation at the beginning of World War 2. It begins during the narrator’s trip to an ancient Etruscan burial site that reminds him of the tomb of the Finzi-Contini family he once obsessed over in childhood. The narrator instantly reveals that the whole family is dead and hints that all but one member was killed in the Holocaust.

His obsession with the Finzi-Contini family begins when he gets small amounts of attention from the two children, Alberto and Micòl. They exchange only silent glances during temple services and school exams. Alberto and Micòl come from a rich and prestigious family and live in near isolation on the grand estate that their great-grandfather bought for the family. When Micòl discovers the narrator hiding near the wall of their garden, she invites him in. Micòl is discovered, and the narrator loses his chance to see behind the wall until adulthood when a chance invitation by Alberto brings a small group of friends together to play tennis on the property. 

As the antisemitic laws ban the group from public areas like libraries, clubs, and schools, they find comfort in the beautiful days playing tennis on the Finzi-Contini property. Due to Micòl’s doting attention, the narrator’s obsession with her grows. Together they explore the estate and connect over their childhood jealousies of each other. When Micòl and the narrator grow too close, she abandons Ferrara for months in order to finish her thesis in Venice. She later admits that she fled rather than risk the narrator professing his feelings for her.

Meanwhile, the narrator, Alberto, and a university friend of Alberto’s named Malnate spend all their time together. Malnate’s political certainties and grand declarations frustrate the narrator, who knows that his own inadequacies keep him from challenging Malnate’s accusations about their bourgeois lifestyle. Although the narrator does stand up for himself and his family, he can only do so by separating his experiences from Alberto’s. As he stays at the Finzi-Contini home each day to work on his thesis in the quiet of their library, he confronts the uncertainty of his studies. Despite his passion for literature, art, and culture, neither he, Micòl, nor Alberto will be employable after graduating. The strict new rules governing Italian Jews keep them from teaching or holding certain jobs. Micòl’s thesis is rejected for the highest honors it deserves simply because the markers want to keep a Jewish person from earning a prestigious degree. Micòl and her family refuse to acknowledge these hurts. At dinners the Finzi-Contini family mock the regulations and the people who enforce them.

Even after graduating, Micòl stays away. Her family keeps an empty place at the table for her return. It is a seat coincidently near the one that her father reserves for the narrator. When she returns, they defend his sitting there by claiming that it is merely his spot. The family shares with the narrator a kind of cathartic experience by listening to the injustices and rudeness they all experience. Meanwhile, the narrator’s father is insistent that the situation will improve, but he anxiously stays up all night until the narrator returns home.       

While the narrator’s family is forced to cut back, the narrator’s brother is sent to university abroad since he cannot study in Italy like his brother did. When the spring holidays arrive, one of the servants working at the narrator’s home pulls him out of his family’s party to tell him that Alberto is calling. Alberto invites him over to the house and alludes to a surprise appearance of Micòl at last. Without wishing goodbye to his extended family, who will all soon die after the German invasion of Italy, he sneaks off to the Finzi-Contini party. As he arrives, he sees that it is true that Micòl is home since her loyal dog, Jor, waits by the property. Although Micòl doesn’t give any indication of interest, the narrator kisses her. Micòl apologizes. 

The narrator finally graduates, but come the spring, Micòl is unable to regather the original tennis group. The city’s antisemitic laws force Micòl and Alberto’s father to break up the gathering. Only Micòl, Alberto, Malnate, and the narrator gather now. Despite Malnate’s support and friendship, the narrator is never able to connect to Micòl as he once did. Instead of giving up, he tries again and again to begin a physical relationship with her, but this only pushes her away. His evenings spent with Malnate eventually culminate in a night at a brothel after which he reveals his treatment of Micòl to Malnate. When his father confronts him inside, he promises to give up Micòl and follows through on his promise to isolate. As Alberto’s health worsens and Malnate is eventually sent back to Milan, the narrator refuses to give up his isolation. The novel ends with him reflecting on his memories of Micòl and the paranoia he feels that she and Malnate were secretly together. After visiting the estate for the last time, he never sees Micòl again.