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Forbidden Notebook
- Author
- Alba Cespedes
- Narrator
- Cassandra Campbell
- Publisher
- Pushkin Press
- Publish Date
- 2 March 2023
- Run Time
- 10 hours 28 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
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
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One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings atmosphere
Annie Ernaux
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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
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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
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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
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Details
- Author
- Alba Cespedes
- Narrator
- Cassandra Campbell
- Duration
- 10 hours 28 minutes
- Release Date
- 2 March 2023
- ISBN
- 9781805330684
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pushkin Press
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre, Narrative theme: love / relationships
Synopsis
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.
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