"Italo Svevo remains, with Joyce, Proust, and Kafka, one of the four unrivalled 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."--Andre Aciman -- Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

“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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

talo Svevo (1861-1928) lived most of his life in Trieste, now part of Italy, but then a port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. ZENO'S CONSCIENCE is his greatest work, seen by James Joyce as one of the century's handful of masterpieces. His other novels include AS A MAN GROWS OLDER and A LIFE. William Weaver is most famously the translator of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco.