One No One and a Hundred Thousand

When Vitangelo Moscarda's wife observed that Vitangelo's nose tilts to the right, Luigi Pirandello's astonishing final book begins. This banal exchange prompts the wealthy, unemployed narrator of the book to reflect on his own perceptions of himself, other people, and the world around him. When Vitangelo determines that he must destroy the version of himself that others see, his self-examination swiftly turns into a relentless, dizzying process that frequently produces darkly humorous outcomes. At first, he only detects little variations in how he sees himself and how others do. It "deals with the breakdown of the personality," according to Pirandello of his 1926 novel. It draws the most radical conclusions and has the most severe repercussions. Samuel Beckett and others provide inspiration for its unsettling humour and existential deconstruction of contemporary identity.