Translated from the Italian by Julia Nelsen

A novel of secrets and female solidarity set in post-war Milan, by one of Italy’s most significant women writers.

It is 1946 and Milan is in ruins. 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 begin to imagine 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. 

Fausta Cialente’s exquisite prose captures the frailty of the human heart in its desperate search for connection. As the narrative roams from the thoughts of character to character, the residents of the attic consider their own complicity and moral compromises. 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.

‘An exquisite chronicle of frozen hearts and their gradual thaw.’ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘Cause for celebration’ Jhumpa Lahiri

Fausta Cialente 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 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.