Translator’s Note
The story is one of 18 in the collection L’anima degli altri (The Soul of Others), published in Italian in 1935 when the author was only 24 years old. While De Céspedes was a best-selling author in her lifetime, this collection, like the rest of her work, fell into obscurity and was not reissued until 2022, when Cliquot, an Italian publisher dedicated to reclaiming forgotten classics, dusted off one of the few copies to be found in the used book kiosks and brought it out with a new introduction.
Author & Translator Bios
Alba de Céspedes was born in Rome in 1911 to an Italian mother and the Cuban ambassador to Italy. Translations of her novels Forbidden Notebook and Her Side of the Story have recently been published in English, and a third, There’s No Turning Back is forthcoming. In addition to writing numerous novels, two of which were banned, she was a poet, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, editor of a literary journal, advice columnist, and pro-Resistance radio personality who was twice jailed for anti-fascist activities. The collection in which this short story appeared was her first book, published when she was 24. She moved to Paris in 1967, where she continued to work until her death 30 years later.
Tamara Lee is a translator from Italian into English. She has worked in publishing, editing, and translation, and supervised the multilingual editing team at the United Nations. She divides her time between New York and Torino.