La Coscienza Di Zeno
Italo Svevo“Italo Svevo remains, with Joyce, Proust, and Kafka, one of the four unrivaled figures of twentieth-century literature. An accomplished ironist, a complex visionary of the modern soul, an anatomist whose scalpel is as fierce as it is compassionate, Svevo is without a doubt Italy’s most serious modern novelist. From the self-deceived protagonist who forswears each of his attempts to give up cigarettes, to the final detonation which seems uncannily prescient of our atomic age, Zeno’s Conscience, in the expert hands of William Weaver’s elegant and vigorous translation, reminds us ever again that if there is one phrase we should confer on Svevo it would be this: Svevo, our contemporary.” – André Aciman
Product DescriptionThis 20th century masterpiece uses the traditional form of autobiography to explore some very untraditional themes. Under the guidance of a psychoanalyst an old man looks back over his life, exploring his motives and trying to make sense of things, but when he decides to abandon the treatment, his reminiscences are published by Doctor S as an act of revenge against the patient who has frustrated the doctor's own desire for complete understanding. In laying bare the disturbing power relations between therapist and subject, Svevo explores the dynamics of identity and self-knowledge in ways which link him with his great contemporaries, Joyce, Proust and Musil.