Zeno's Conscience
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Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo
Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno's interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected-and unexpectedly happy-marriage to Ada's homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. Relating these misadventures with wry wit and a perspicacity at once unblinking and compassionate, Zeno's Conscience is a miracle of psychological realism.
Italo Svevo (1861-1928) was an Italian writer and businessman. He published two novels in the 1890s, A Life and As a Man Grows Older (the latter available from NYRB Classics), but after they were dismissed by critics and ignored by the public, he abandoned literature and went to work in his father-in-law's paint business. With the support of James Joyce, he returned to writing and published Zeno's Conscience in 1923 to international acclaim. Svevo had finished a new book and was at work on another when he was killed in a car crash in 1928. Frederika Randall (1948-2020) was a writer, reporter, and translator. Among her translations are Ippolito Nievo's Confessions of an Italian and, for NYRB Classics, Guido Morselli's Dissipatio H.G. and The Communist. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Translation and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and with Sergio Luzzatto, the Cundill Prize. Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History, a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award; the novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor's Tongue; and the Little Bookroom title San Francisco Noir. He is a writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in New Orleans.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780375727764 |
| ISBN 10 | 0375727760 |
| Title | Zeno's Conscience |
| Author | Italo Svevo |
| Series | Vintage International |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 2003-02-04 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |