Synopsis

The novel is set in post-war Milan, where a large family find a home in a cramped loft, and Camilla, abandoned by her husband, takes charge of the situation as they endure an incredibly severe winter. The season stretches throughout the novel with beautiful but unsettling descriptions that sit like the heavy snow weighing down the loft’s dilapidated roofs.

In these harsh but intimate conditions, the characters co-exist and persevere, strained by desires for the future and scars from the past. The narrative seamlessly flows between the characters’ thoughts, placing us inside these intimate quarters and the struggle that unites and divides them. By the time spring comes, an unthinkable tragedy will have occurred, and as the season of rebirth begins, much will have irrevocably changed.

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 interpretated 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.