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On June 23rd 1950 Pavese Italys greatest modern writer received the coveted Strega Award for his novel Among Women Only. On August 26th in a small hotel in his home town of Turin he took his own life. Shortly before his death he methodically destroyed all his private papers. His diary is all that remains and for this the contemporary reader can be grateful. Contemporary speculation attributed this tragedy to either an unhappy love aff air with the American film star Constance Dawling or his growing disillusionment with the Italian Communist Party. His Diaries however reveal a man whose art was his only means of repressing the specter of suicide which had haunted him since childhood an obsession that finally overwhelmed him. As John Taylor notes he possessed something much more precious than a political theory a natural sensitivity to the plight and dignity of common people be they bums priests grapepickers gas station attendants office workers or anonymous girls picked up on the street though to women the author couldas he admittedbe as misogynous as he was affectionate. Bitter and incisive This Business of Living is both moving and painful to read and stands with James Joyces Letters and Andre Gides Journals as one of the great literary testaments of the twentieth century.