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There’s No Turning Back
$26.00
| Quantity | Discount |
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| 5 + | $19.50 |
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Description
From the beloved author of Forbidden Notebook and Her Side of the Story comes a coming-of-age novel so subversive, it was banned by the Fascist regime when it was first published in 1938.
There’s No Turning Back was Alba de Céspedes’s debut novel, first published to great acclaim and commercial success in 1938. The narrative centers on eight women in their early twenties who attend the same college in Rome. Some are there to study, others to escape a scandal or keep a secret. Over the course of two years, from 1934 to 1936, Vinca, Valentina, Augusta, Silvia, Xenia, Anna, Milly, and Emanuela—who stem from radically different backgrounds—enter adulthood, experiencing the challenges of love, work, and emancipation. Ultimately, each young woman takes a completely different direction based on her own expectations, ambitions, and choices.
Much like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, each character is given a distinct voice, with the narrative shifting seamlessly from one point of view to the next. Considered experimental and revolutionary at the time, this novel entered the canon as the first to break with the traditional image of womanhood expected in literature and society—so much so that the Fascist regime banned the novel in Italy.
As the novel that established Alba de Céspedes as a subversive new voice and in a modern translation by Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein, this novel is bound to build on the success of Forbidden Notebook and Her Side of the Story.Alba de Céspedes (1911–1997) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban 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. New English translations of her novels Forbidden Notebook and Her Side of the Story were published in 2023 by Astra House to great acclaim.US
Additional information
| Weight | 20 oz |
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| Subjects | womanhood, books for women, translation, adulthood, Debut novel, banned books, jhumpa lahiri, italian translation, FIC107000, The New Yorker, mussolini, fascist, family life, girlhood, Clarice Lispector, Lucia Berlin, Domenico Starnone, Mary McCarthy, Claire Messud, Annie Ernaux, Elena Ferrante, Her Side of the Story, Forbidden Notebook, fiction, Literature, women, feminist, gift, feminism, marriage, fascism, Italy, society, motherhood, world war 2, Friendship, novel, coming of age, FIC044000, university, WWII, gifts for women, Virginia Woolf, rome, 1930s |