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Biographical note
Alba de Céspedes (1911-97) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet and screenwriter. The granddaughter of the first President of Cuba, de Céspedes was raised in Rome. Married at 15 and a mother by 16, she began her writing career after her divorce at the age of 20. She worked as a journalist throughout the 1930s while also taking an active part in the Italian partisan struggle, and was twice jailed for her anti-fascist activities. After the fall of fascism, she founded the literary journal Mercurio and went on to become one of Italy's most successful and most widely translated authors. Forbidden Notebook and Her Side of the Story are also available from Pushkin Press. Ann Goldstein is a former editor at the New Yorker. She has translated works by Elena Ferrante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alessandro Baricco. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere
- Annie Ernaux,
Ruthlessly, thrillingly, unsentimental... [A] dauntless writer... To read de Céspedes for the first time brings both exhilaration and humility, a reordering of one's mental bookshelves
TLS
One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers
- Jhumpa Lahiri,
Matches the bravery of the author's Forbidden Notebook in its groundbreaking portrayal of a group of female friends in Rome... Readers will be grateful for this rediscovery
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
De Céspedes writes with blazing urgency about the hidden lives of women realizing that they are being suffocated by the very institutions that claim to protect them. A book so incendiary it's practically hot to the touch
- Sarah Chihaya, author of 'Bibliophilia',
Her writing is brilliant: angry, electric, slightly mystical
The Times
de Céspedes quietly subverts a culture and political hierarchy which preached that a woman's place was in the home... Beautifully rendered
Irish Times
de Céspedes is masterfully in control of her ensemble in this energetic, timeless coming-of-age story
Literary Review
A stunningly powerful novel of a group of young women coming of age in 1930s Rome, from the celebrated author of Forbidden Notebook
The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets - a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom.
A virtuosic group portrait, There's No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women's lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.