Forbidden Notebook: A Novel [Paperback]

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“Powerful.” —The New Yorker
“Brilliant.” —The Wall Street Journal
Astounding.  —NPR
“Forceful, clear and morally engaged.” —The Washington Post
“Subversive.” —The New York Times Book Review
An exquisite, tormented howl. —The Financial Times
Quick, propulsive, and addictive. —Los Angeles Review of Books
“Gripping.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A remarkable story.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
“Wrenching, sardonic.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“As relevant today as it was in postwar Italy. —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

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.

In this modern translation by acclaimed Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein, 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 scrutinlã_