A Very Cold Winter

Name: A Very Cold Winter
Brand: Unknown
SKU: 9798893380231
Price: 51.0 NZD
Availability: InStock

By Fausta Cialente

0.0 (0 reviews)

3.94

( 475 ratings, 76 reviews)

Brief Description

'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... Read More

Format: Paperback / softback

$51⁰⁰

International Supplier

This title is in-stock with overseas suppliers. While it is not available locally, we fly books in weekly from the US and UK to our Auckland warehouse for immediate dispatch.

AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 2-3 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

A Very Cold Winter

$51⁰⁰

Description

'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 compromises, wondering if they're able to escape the weight of what they've lived through.

Fausta Cialente's exquisite prose captures the frailty of the human heart in its desperate search for connection. An introduction from author and Italian translator Claudia Durastanti frames this classic feminist icon for the modern American reader. Tender, thought-provoking, and devastatingly beautiful, A Very Cold Winter is about the impossibility of forgetting the past and the difficulty of living with it.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9798893380231

Publisher: Transit Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 March 2026

Country: United States

Imprint: Transit Books

Illustration: Illustrations

Contributors:

Translated by Julia Nelsen
Introduction by Claudia Durastanti

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 133.0mm

Height: 203.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 296

Collections

Classic Fiction Fausta Cialente Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction

About the Author

Author, journalist, and translatorFausta Cialente was one of the first self-declared feminist Italian writers. Her early work anticipated modern feminism by decades, however, distribution was limited by the Fascist censorship that followed her refusal to cut depictions of a lesbian affair from her first book Natalia (1931). Contributing to the anti-Fascist movement through her journalism from Egypt, Cialente returned home after the war, and after a long silence, she began publishing again in 1961, eventually winning the prestigious Strega Prize in 1976. With her expatriation that can be interpreted as an influence on the statelessness of her work, Cialente remained far from literary circles and wrote only when she had the urge. Perhaps due to these factors and the initial censorship, her critical recognition came late, and consequently, there has been limited international exposure to this exceptional Italian writer. Cialente spent the last period of her life in Pangbourne, England, working mainly on translations into Italian from English, including Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and she remained there until her death in 1994 at the age of ninety-six.

Julia Nelsen

translates between English and Italian. A San Francisco native, she holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and a masters in European languages from the University of Milan, where she studied on a multiyear fellowship from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her work has appeared in Circumference, Two Lines, Chicago Review, Firmament, and elsewhere. A Very Cold Winter is her first full-length translation.

Claudia Durastanti

is an Italian writer, translator, and cultural critic. Strangers I Knowwas shortlisted for the Strega Prize and translated into 21 languages. Her forthcoming novel Missitalia will be published by Summit in the U.S. and Fitzcarraldo in the UK. Her work has appeared in Granta, Apartamento, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She's the curator of the feminist imprint La Tartaruga.