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Author, journalist, and translator, Fausta 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 96. Julia Nelsen translates from and into Italian. A San Francisco native, she holds a Ph.D. 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 multi-year 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 translated book. Claudia Durastanti is a former Italian Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome, and one of the founders of the Italian Literature Festival in London. She's written for Granta, Bomb, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is the Italian translator for Ocean Vuong and the most recent edition of The Great Gatsby, among others. This novel is her fourth book, the first to be translated into English, and the winner of the Premio Pozzale Luigi Russo, the Premio Strega Off, and a finalist for the Premio Strega. For now, she lives in Rome.
""Cialente was a pioneering feminist, anti-fascist writer with a profound literary sensibility. In this crucial account of post-war Italy, her rootless authorial perspective sheds unique light on individual, collective, and national trauma, and speaks to ever-relevant questions about what it means to be a woman, a foreigner, and a survivor. Julia Nelsen's engrossing English translation is cause for celebration.""--Jhumpa Lahiri
