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Forbidden Notebook

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What to expect

Out running an errand, Valeria Cossati gives in to a sudden impulse - she buys a shiny black notebook. She starts keeping a diary in secret, recording her concerns about her daughter, the constant churn of the domestic routine and her fears that her husband will discover her new habit. With each entry Valeria plunges deeper into her interior life, uncovering profound dissatisfaction and restlessness. As she finds her own voice, the roles that have come to define her-as wife, as mother, as daughter-begin to break apart.
Forbidden Notebook is a rediscovered jewel of Italian literature, published here in a new translation by the celebrated Ann Goldstein and with a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri. A captivating feminist classic, it is an intimate, haunting story of domestic discontent in postwar Rome, and of one woman's awakening to her true thoughts and desires.

Critics Review

One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers
Jhumpa Lahiri
Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings atmosphere
Annie Ernaux
While I'm writing, I confine myself to occasionally reading books that keep me company not as entertainment but as solid companions. I call them books of encouragement, like those by Alba de Céspedes
Elena Ferrante
Recently rediscovered, her work has lost none of its subversive force... What might have been a family story becomes an excruciating study of the diarist herself
New York Times
The absorbing and abidingly resonant confession of a woman's desire to do that most elusive thing: forge a self apart from her caring for others. Forbidden Notebook can also be read as an allegory of fascism, a post-Roe cautionary tale, and corroboration of the revelatory and exhilarating but also implosive power of honest words.
Lisa Halliday, bestselling author of Asymmetry
Author Alba Cespedes
Narrator Cassandra Campbell
Duration 10 hours and 28 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781805330684
Format Audiobook
Publisher Pushkin Press
Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Love and relationships
Availability AU, GB, IE

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