Author/Uploaded by Alba de Céspedes
Contents Cover Half Title Also by Alba de Céspedes Title Page Copyright Epigraph Contents Half Title Foreword A Note from the Translator Forbidden Notebook About the Author About the Translator Guide Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword A N...
Contents Cover Half Title Also by Alba de Céspedes Title Page Copyright Epigraph Contents Half Title Foreword A Note from the Translator Forbidden Notebook About the Author About the Translator Guide Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword A Note from the Translator Start of Content Pagebreaks of the print version Cover Page i ii iii iv v vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 261 263 ALSO BY ALBA DE CÉSPEDES There’s No Turning Back(1938) The Best of Husbands(1952) Between Then and Now(1960) Copyright © Mondadori Libri S.p.A., Milano Translation copyright © 2023 by Ann Goldstein Foreword copyright © 2023 by Jhumpa Lahiri Originally published in Italian as Quaderno Proibito in 1952 by Mondadori. This book was translated thanks to a grant awarded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited. Author photo courtesy of Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected]. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Astra House A Division of Astra Publishing House astrahouse.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: De Céspedes, Alba, 1911-1997, author. | Goldstein, Ann, 1949- translator. Title: Forbidden notebook : a novel / Alba de Céspedes ; translated by Ann Goldstein. Other titles: Quaderno proibito. English Description: First edition. | New York : Astra House, [2023] | Summary: “In this modern translation and exquisitely crafted portrayal of domestic life, Forbidden Notebook centers the inner life of a dissatisfied housewife, Valeria Cossati, living in postwar Rome”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022040939 (print) | LCCN 2022040940 (ebook) | ISBN 9781662601392 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781662601408 (epub) Subjects: LCGFT: Domestic fiction. | Novels. Classification: LCC PQ4809.E75 Q313 2023 (print) | LCC PQ4809.E75 (ebook) | DDC 853/.914--dc23/eng/20220825 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040939 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040940 First edition Señor don Blas, from what book did you take this text? From the theater of human life, which is where I read. —Ramón de la Cruz CONTENTS Foreword A Note from the Translator Forbidden Notebook About the Author About the Translator FOREWORD by Jhumpa Lahiri “Forbidden” evokes, to my English ear, the biblical fruit whose consumption leads to shame and expulsion from Paradise. Eve’s story is not irrelevant to a novel in which a woman succumbs to a temptation: to record her thoughts and observations in a notebook. Valeria Cossati’s impulse to keep a diary leads not so much to the knowledge of good and evil as it does to self-knowledge, advocated by Socrates and serving as a cornerstone of philosophical inquiry ever since. In Valeria’s case, it also leads to solitude, alienation, guilt, and painful lucidity. The Italian title of Forbidden Notebook is Quaderno proibito—literally translated, “prohibited notebook.” Forbidden and prohibited may be interchangeable in English, but the latter lacks the romance that might soften the former (as in “forbidden love”), and connotes, instead, legal restrictions, interdictions, and punishment. “Prohibited” comes from the Latin verb prohibere (its etymology, essentially, means “to hold away”), and it was fundamental to legal terminology in Ancient Rome. It is the word De Céspedes chooses to describe Valeria’s notebook, and to interrogate, more broadly, a woman’s right, in post-war Italy, to express herself in writing, to have a voice, and to hold opinions and secrets that distinguish herself from her family. The act of purchasing the eponymous notebook, along with the ongoing dilemma of where to conceal it, drives the tension as the novel opens. Having purchased it illegally and smuggled it home, Valeria hides it in various locations—in a sack of rags, an old trunk, an empty biscuit tin. But it always runs the risk of being discovered by her husband and grown children, all of whom laugh at the mere idea that she might want to keep a diary. As soon as she owns the notebook, Valeria is anxious and afraid, but she is also armed. For although acquiring a diary throws her into crisis, the quaderno