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Digital Audiobook
There's No Turning Back by Alba Céspedes

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There's No Turning Back

Narrator
Aida Reluzco
Publisher
Pushkin Press
Publish Date
13 February 2025
Run Time
11 hours 1 minute
Format
Audiobook

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What to expect

The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets - a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom.
A virtuosic group portrait,  There's No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women's lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.

Critics Review

  • Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere

    Annie Ernaux

  • One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers

    Jhumpa Lahiri

  • Matches the bravery of the author's  Forbidden Notebook in its groundbreaking portrayal of a group of female friends in Rome... Readers will be grateful for this rediscovery

    Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  • De Céspedes writes with blazing urgency about the hidden lives of women realizing that they are being suffocated by the very institutions that claim to protect them. A book so incendiary it's practically hot to the touch

    Sarah Chihaya, author of 'Bibliophilia'

User Reviews

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Details

Author
Alba Céspedes
Narrator
Aida Reluzco
Duration
11 hours 1 minute
Release Date
13 February 2025
ISBN
9781805334866
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Pushkin Press
Genre
Classic fiction: general and literary, Fiction in translation

Synopsis

The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets - a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom. A virtuosic group portrait, There's No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women's lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.

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