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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
There's No Turning Back
Discover the "boundary-breaking" (LitHub) debut novel by the beloved feminist author of the "brilliant" (The Wall Street Journal) Forbidden Notebook and the "courageous" (The Washington Post) Her Side of the Story that was so subversive, it was banned by the Italian Fascist regime when it was first published in 1938. A coming-of-age novel that is as relevant today as it was nearly ninety years ago, There's No Turning Back centers on eight women with radically different backgrounds who attend the same college in Rome. Some are there to study, others to escape a scandal, or keep a secret, and during their time there, they experience the challenges of love, work, and emancipation. Considered experimental and revolutionary at the time, this novel established Alba de Céspedes as "one of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers" (Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner). Translated by Ann Goldstein, There's No Turning Back demonstrates why de Céspedes deserves "an important place in the canon of women's literature" (Chicago Review of Books).
Book Details
- Publisher: Washington Square Press
- Publish Date: Feb 11st, 2025
- Pages: 304
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.10in - 6.30in - 1.10in - 1.00lb
- EAN: 9781668083635
- Categories: • Feminist• World Literature - Italy• Women
About the Author
de Céspedes, Alba: - Alba de Céspedes (1911-1997) was a bestselling Italian Cuban feminist writer greatly influenced by the cultural developments that lead to and resulted from World War II. Along with being imprisoned for her anti-fascist work, several of her novels were banned in Italy. After the war, she moved to Paris, where she lived until her death in 1997.
Praise for this book
"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 Bibliophobia "One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers."
--Jhumpa Lahiri "Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere."
--Annie Ernaux "De Céspedes' work has lost none of its subversive force."
--Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Book Review "Alba de Céspedes wrote novels in the 1940s and 1950s that were radically contemporary, both then and now . . . [her] fiction is written with an acute sense of responsibility to tell the truth."
--Elena Lappin, The Washington Post "If you're a Ferrante fan, you'll likely love de Céspedes' piercing prose, as it probes the inner lives of women searching for meaning in a patriarchal Italian culture and facing the distance between who they've become and who they'd like to be."
--Julianne McShane, Mother Jones "De Céspedes combines intimate revelation about women's bodily and emotional lives with a deep moral seriousness about the need for change within marriage as an institution and within women's lives."
--Lara Feigel, The Guardian "De Céspedes' account of the alienating, confining, tenacious force of the family endures."
--Eleanor Careless, The New Inquiry
--Sarah Chihaya, author of Bibliophobia "One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers."
--Jhumpa Lahiri "Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere."
--Annie Ernaux "De Céspedes' work has lost none of its subversive force."
--Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Book Review "Alba de Céspedes wrote novels in the 1940s and 1950s that were radically contemporary, both then and now . . . [her] fiction is written with an acute sense of responsibility to tell the truth."
--Elena Lappin, The Washington Post "If you're a Ferrante fan, you'll likely love de Céspedes' piercing prose, as it probes the inner lives of women searching for meaning in a patriarchal Italian culture and facing the distance between who they've become and who they'd like to be."
--Julianne McShane, Mother Jones "De Céspedes combines intimate revelation about women's bodily and emotional lives with a deep moral seriousness about the need for change within marriage as an institution and within women's lives."
--Lara Feigel, The Guardian "De Céspedes' account of the alienating, confining, tenacious force of the family endures."
--Eleanor Careless, The New Inquiry