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.Alba de Céspedes (1911-97) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet and screenwriter. The granddaughter of the first President of Cuba, de Céspedes was raised in Rome. Married at 15 and a mother by 16, she began her writing career after her divorce at the age of 20. She worked as a journalist throughout the 1930s while also taking an active part in the Italian partisan struggle, and was twice jailed for her anti-fascist activities. After the fall of fascism, she founded the literary journal  Mercurio and went on to become one of Italy's most successful and most widely translated authors.  Her Side of the Story is also forthcoming from Pushkin Press.One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writersReading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings atmosphereWhile 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 CéspedesRecently rediscovered, her work has lost none of its subversive force... What might have been a family story becomes an excruciating study of the diarist herselfThe 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.
Published by: Pushkin Press