A Very Cold Winter

A$35 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books · No longer available

'Cause for celebration.' - Jhumpa Lahiri A novel of secrets and female solidarity set in post-war Milan, by one of Italy's most significant women writers. Fausta Cialente (1898-1994) was a novelist, journalist, political activist, and one of the first self-declared feminist Italian writers. Though the fascists censored her early work, she continued as an active member in the anti-fascist movement while living abroad in Egypt, writing pamphlets and making daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Italian regime. She returned home after the war and eventually began publishing again, winning Italy's most important literary award, the Strega Prize, in 1976. In A Very Cold Winter, it is 1946 and Milan is in ruins. A woman named Camilla opens her illegally occupied attic to her extended family as they rebuild their lives among the rubble. The absence of men - lost to war, death, or abandonment - leaves the burden of survival to the women, who use the attic to incubate fragile futures: Camilla works to carry the family toward dignity and normalcy; Lalla dreams of becoming a novelist to escape their grim reality; Regina, widowed by the war, pins her hopes on her infant daughter; Alba chases independence and love. Varying political ideologies, loyalties, and wartime secrets filter through the house, creating a thick net of tension. As the narrative roams from the thoughts of character to character, the residents of this 'hotel for the poor' consider their own complicity and moral

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.