Description
DATE OF RELEASE: 5 NOV 2026
A novel of secrets and female solidarity set in post-war Milan, by one of Italy’s most significant women writers. Translated by Julia Nelsen. 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.
Paperback | Publication: 5 Nov 2026, Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781398564039
Extent: 240 pages
