{"product_id":"forbidden-notebook","title":"Forbidden Notebook","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTranslated from Italian by Ann Goldstein\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRome, 1952. On a Sunday afternoon, Valeria Cossati buys a notebook from a tobacconist's shop — an act that is technically illegal on the Sabbath, and which she immediately knows she must hide. What she hides inside it is more dangerous still: the truth about her own life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat follows is one of the great novels of domestic dissatisfaction — a middle-aged wife and mother slowly, irreversibly, becoming conscious of herself. The notebook is the problem. Writing things down makes them real. And real things, once seen, cannot be unseen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDe Céspedes was a Cuban-Italian writer, resistance radio broadcaster, anti-fascist prisoner, and one of the essential voices of twentieth-century Italian literature — somehow overlooked in English until very recently. Forbidden Notebook arrived in Ann Goldstein's translation in 2023 and promptly recalibrated a lot of readers' understanding of what Italian women's fiction is. Goldstein, Elena Ferrante's translator, recognised the connection herself: de Céspedes is arguably the writer Ferrante was writing out of.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShort, compressed, and devastating.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Unfaithful Bookshop ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57054986731903,"sku":null,"price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0986\/5763\/2639\/files\/getimage-332.jpg?v=1772473128","url":"https:\/\/unfaithfulbookshop.co.uk\/products\/forbidden-notebook","provider":"The Unfaithful Bookshop ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}