Book Description

Images of women. There's a woman who is an over-exposed star of the erotic cinema and aches for a part in 'serious' films. A a woman whose pompous lover, the Self-Tuaght Man, has taught his young mistress's blood to run cold, and a woman who looks for her platonic soul mate in a beautiful youth and discovers a new passion fo masochism.

Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, (November 28, 1907 – September 26, 1990) was one of the leading Italian novelists in the 20th century.

His works explored issues of modern sexuality, alienation, and existentialism. He is best known for his antifascist novel Il Conformista (The Conformist), which was the basis for the 1970 film The Conformist which was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other Moravia novels that became films include Il Disprezzo (known as A Ghost at Noon or Contempt) filmed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963 as Le Mépris (Contempt), and La Ciociara (Two Women) filmed by Vittorio de Sica in 1961.

Most of Moravia's works deal with themes such as moral aridity, the hypocrisy of modern life and the impossibility of finding happiness in traditional relationships like love or marriage. These themes are usually illustrated as the typical pathology of middle-class life; marriage, in particular, is the main target of works such as Disobedience and L'amore coniugale (1949). In works like Il disprezzo and La noia (both from the 1950s), the main theme is alienation, despite being always observed from a rational and realistic point of view. Political themes are often present: an example is La Romana, the story of a young prostitute entangled with the Fascist regime and with a net of conspirators. The extreme realism of sexuality in La noia anticipated the more experimental and psychology-oriented works of the 1970s.

Moravia's writing style was highly regarded for extreme starkness and lack of adornment, characterized by simple commonly used words (although within a very elaborate syntactic background). Propositions often constitute a description of a single psychological observation which are then mixed with others to form a complex state of mood. In later works, the use of inner monologue becomes increasingly prominent.