With a brilliant new translation, Astra House is relaunching Italian-Cuban feminist Alba de Céspedes's classic domestic novel Quaderno Proibito, which inspired contemporary feminist writers like Elena Ferrante.
In this modern translation by acclaimed Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein, The Forbidden Notebook centers the inner life of a dissatisfied housewife living in postwar Rome.
Valeria Cossati never suspected how unhappy she had become with the shabby gentility of her bourgeois life-until she begins to jot down her thoughts and feelings in a little black book she keeps hidden in a closet. This new secret activity leads her to scrutinize herself and her life more closely, and she soon realizes that her individuality is being stifled by her devotion and sense of duty toward her husband, daughter, and son. As the conflicts between parents and children, husband and wife, and friends and lovers intensify, what goes on behind the Cossatis' facade of middle-class respectability gradually comes to light, tearing the family's fragile fabric apart.
An exquisitely crafted portrayal of domestic life, The Forbidden Notebook recognizes the universality of human aspirations. Alba de Céspedes (1911—1997) was a bestselling Cuban-Italian feminist writer greatly influenced by the cultural developments that lead to and resulted from World War II. In 1935, she was jailed for her anti-fascist activities in Italy. Two of her novels were also banned-Nessuno Torna Indietro (1938) and La Fuga (1940). In 1943, she was again imprisoned for her assistance with Radio Partigiana in Bari, where she was a Resistance radio personality known as Clorinda. After the war, she moved to Paris, where she lived until her death in 1997.
