There's No Turning Back
A Novel
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This deeply intelligent 1938 novel from de Céspedes (1911–1997), crisply translated by Goldstein, matches the bravery of the author's The Forbidden Notebook in its groundbreaking portrayal of a group of female friends in Rome. The women, all literature students from different parts of Italy, meet as boarders. As the novel unfolds, the women reckon with important life decisions and face pressure to conform to their patriarchal Catholic society. The oldest, Augusta, warns the others, "Once you're married, you won't be free ever again." Nevertheless, Anna plans to marry and have a child after her studies are completed, while Xenia runs away from school and enters a criminal underworld. The author builds tension as the characters consider the gravity of their choices. As Sylvia, the "genius" member of their group, notes, "It's as if we're on a bridge. We've already departed from one side and haven't yet reached the other.... What awaits us is still enveloped in fog. We don't know what we'll find when the fog clears." Readers will be grateful for this rediscovery.
