Forbidden Notebook

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.

Product details

• Authors: Alba de Céspedes, Alba de Cespedes, Alba De Cespedes
• Assisted by: Jhumpa Lahiri (Introduction), Ann Goldstein (Translation), Goldstein Ann (Translation)
• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 07.03.2024
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction > Narrative literature > Contemporary literature (from 1945)
• EAN: 9781782278221
• ISBN: 978-1-78227-822-1
• Pages: 272
• Dimensions (packing): 13 x 19.8 x 2 cm
• Series: Pushkin Press Classics
• Subjects: Miu Miu, FICTION / General, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Elena Ferrante, Fiction in translation, Jhumpa Lahiri, Natalia Ginzburg, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Feminine mystique, domestic fiction, days of abandonment, marriage fiction, rediscovered classic, family lexicon, classic Italian feminist literature, italian literature classics, feminist classic fiction, women’s voices in Italian literature, Jhumpa Lahiri foreword, books like Natalia Ginzburg, books like Elena Ferrante, all our yesterdays, Forbidden Notebook review, rediscovered Italian novels, domestic discontent fiction, Alba de Cespedes, postwar Italian fiction, Valeria Cossati diary novel, novels about identity and self-discovery, novels about secret diaries, 1950s Rome, Mrs Caliban Rachel Ingalls, Italian literary gems, books exploring roles of wife and mother, emotional exploration in literature, intimate stories of personal transformation, feminist literature postwar Rome, subversive feminist fiction, books about domestic routine and dissatisfaction, Ann Goldstein, women’s awakening fiction, gender roles fiction, Italian classic fiction, Ann Goldstein translations