It is late autumn in 1950 and 43-year-old Valeria goes out to buy cigarettes for her husband. In the tobacco shop, she sees a stack of black, shiny, thick notebooks. She buys one on impulse but is immediately consumed with thoughts of where she can hide it from her husband and two children in the small apartment in which they live.

She has devoted almost half her life to being a wife and raising children, and as she begins to write her own thoughts down in the notebook, her world both expands and unravels. Valeria had successfully forgotten who she was until the moment she put pen to paper. This act gives her the freedom to have something for herself, to have a secret from her husband and children, and a reason to desire to be alone: so that she can write. The more she fills the notebook the closer she comes to understanding herself, but the more lost she feels in the world.

To read Forbidden Notebook is to be equally captivated and devastated. The realities of domestic life are chillingly dissected to perfection. Ann Goldstein, acclaimed English translator of Elena Ferrante, was intrigued by two references in Ferrante’s Frantumaglia to the author Alba de Céspedes. Ferrante lists a de Céspedes novel as one of the few she could read while she was writing. When Goldstein discovered that de Céspedes was among the most popular and controversial authors in Italy in the mid-20th century (two of her novels were banned and she was imprisoned for anti-fascist activities), she was surprised by how difficult it was to track down her works in print today. When she came across a copy of Forbidden Notebook she knew immediately that it needed a fresh translation into English. Championed by the likes of Annie Ernaux, Jhumpa Lahiri and Elena Ferrante, Alba de Céspedes is more than deserving of the renaissance her work will now receive.