Out running an errand, Valeria Cossati gives in to a sudden impulse - she buys a shiny black notebook. She keeps a diary in secret, recording her worries about her children, fears her husband will find her up late writing and the constant churn of the domestic routine. With each entry she plunges deeper into her interior life, and the roles that have come to define her - as wife, as mother, as daughter - begin to break apart.

Forbidden Notebook is a rediscovered classic of Italian literature, published here in a new translation by the celebrated Ann Goldstein and with a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri. Glinting with sharp insight, it is a haunting story of domestic discontent in postwar Rome, and of one woman’s powerful awakening to her true thoughts and desires.