Forbidden Notebook


 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
 
 
 
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 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