Forbidden Notebook Alba De Cspedes Ann Goldstein Translation by Alba De Céspedes, Ann Goldstein (translation), Jhumpa Lahiri (foreword) 9781662601408, 1662601409 instant download after payment.

Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Longlist

With a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri, Forbidden Notebook is a classic domestic novel by the Italian-Cuban feminist writer Alba de Céspedes, whose work inspired contemporary writers like Elena Ferrante centring on the inner life of a dissatisfied housewife living in postwar Rome

"Ann Goldstein, who translates Ferrante’s writing & has a particular skill for conveying the full power of a woman’s emotional register, for locating an undertow of wrath or grief even in stated ambivalence, has reinvigorated the text." — Jouman Khatib, The New York Times Book Review

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 & her life more closely, & she soon realizes that her individuality is being stifled by her devotion & sense of duty toward her husband, daughter, and son. 

As the conflicts between parents & children, husband & wife, & friends & lovers intensify, what goes on behind the Cossatis’ facade of middle-class respectability gradually comes to light, tearing the family’s fragile fabric apart. 

"De Céspedes deftly charts the widening gap between Valeria's increasingly desperate inner life & the roles she feels forced to play in a feminist novel that consistently calls into question the ways its narrator makes sense of her claustrophobic domestic world. A wrenching, sardonic depiction of a woman caught in a social trap." — Kirkus Reviews 

An exquisitely crafted portrayal of domestic life, Forbidden Notebook recognizes the universality of human aspirations.

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Alba de Céspedes (1911-97) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet & screenwriter. She worked as a journalist throughout the 1930s while also fighting against fascism.&nb