A stunningly powerful novel of a group of young women coming of age in 1930s Rome, from the celebrated author of Forbidden Notbooks

The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets – a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom.

A virtuosic group portrait, There’s No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women’s lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.

'Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere
Annie Ernaux

'The daring story of eight young women at boarding school under fascism, it was long out of print in English until Ann Goldstein’s magnificent new translation' Vicenzo Latronico Observer, Books of the Year

'Ruthlessly, thrillingly, unsentimental… [A] dauntless writer… To read de Céspedes for the first time brings both exhilaration and humility, a reordering of one’s mental bookshelves' TLS