Book excerpt: Published just months before the author's suicide in 1950, this novel has since become one of Pavese's most sought-after books. In this classic, a successful couturier returns to Turin, the city in which she grew up, at the end of World War II. Opening a salon of her own leads her into a nihilistic circle of young hedonists, including the charismatic Rosetta, whose tragic death forms the novel's climax. But Turin itself is at the heart of the story, its pervading melancholy deftly rendered by a master craftsman.