The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets – a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom.

A virtuosic group portrait, There’s No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women’s lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.