The modern Italian classic discovered and championed by James Joyce, ZENO'S CONSCIENCE is a marvel of psychological insight, published here in a fine new translation by William Weaver - the first in more than seventy years. Italo Svevo's masterpiece tells the story of a hapless, doubting, guilt-ridden man paralyzed by fits of ecstasy and despair and tickled by his own cleverness. His doctor advises him, as a form of therapy, to write his memoirs; in doing so, Zeno reconstructs and ultimately reshapes the events of his life into a palatable reality for himself - a reality, however, founded on...

Not so long ago Emilio Brentani was a promising young author. Now he is an insurance agent on the fast track to forty. He gains a new lease on life, though, when he falls for the young and gorgeous Angiolina-except that his angel just happens to be an unapologetic cheat. But what begins as a comedy of infatuated misunderstanding ends in tragedy, as Emilio's jealous persistence in his folly-against his friends' and devoted sister's advice, and even his own best knowledge-leads to the loss of the one person who, too late, he realizes he truly loves. Marked by deep humanity and earthy humor, by...

""Senilita"" e il secondo romanzo di Italo Svevo. Il romanzo apparve sull'Indipendente a puntate nel 1898 e fu pubblicato in volume, a spese dell'autore, nello stesso anno ma senza ottenere alcun successo, tanto che la delusione contribui ad allontanare per un lungo periodo lo Svevo dalla scrittura. I temi della narrazione - che racconta la storia di una vita divisa tra brama di piaceri e desiderio di amore e il rimpianto di non averli goduti - sono l'incapacita di gestire la vita e l'inettitudine, la quale porta l'individuo ad ammalarsi o a vegetare nei ricordi, in uno stato di senilita.

In this tragicomic study of deception and disappointment, Italo Svevo - who himself was an undiscovered writer until his old age - parodies elements of his own life and offers an insightful psychological portrait of a person who has lost touch with reality.

A marvel of psychological insight from one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century When vain, obsessive and guilt-ridden Zeno Cosini seeks help for his neuroses, his psychoanalyst suggests he writes his memoirs as a form of therapy. Zeno's account is an alternative reality, a series of elliptical episodes dealing with the death of his father, his career, his marriage and affairs, and, above all, his passion for smoking and his spectacular failure to resist the promise of that last cigarette. A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination, Svevo's...