Zeno's conscience / Italo Svevo ; translated from the Italian by William Weaver with an introduction by the translator and a preface by Elizabeth Hardwick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Svevo, Italo, 1861-1928.

Contributor:

Weaver, William, 1923-2013.

Series:

Everyman's library ; 249.

Everyman's library ; 249

Standardized Title:

Coscienza di Zeno. English

Language:

English

Italian

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xlix, 437 pages : maps ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Summary:

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 compromise, delusion, and rationalization.

With cigarette in hand, Zeno sets out in search of health and happiness, hoping along the way to free himself from countless vices, not least of which is his accursed "last cigarette!" (Zeno's famously ineffectual refrain is inevitably followed by a lapse in resolve.) His amorous wanderings win him the shrill affections of an aspiring coloratura, and his confidence in his financial savoir-faire involves him in a hopeless speculative enterprise. Meanwhile, his trusting wife reliably awaits his return at appointed mealtimes.

Zeno's adventures rise to antic heights in this pioneering psychoanalytic novel, as his restlessly self-preserving commentary inventively embroiders the truth. Absorbing and devilishly entertaining, Zeno's Conscience is at once a comedy of errors, a sly testimonial to the joys of procrastination, and a surpassingly lucid vision of human nature by one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century.

Contents:

Map of Zeno's Trieste 1

Preamble 5

Smoke 7

My Father's Death 31

The Story of My Marriage 61

Wife and Mistress 156

The Story of a Business Partnership 272

Psychoanalysis 402.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page xxvii).

ISBN:

0375413308

OCLC:

47785597