Zeno's Conscience

Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the spirit of Joyce and Kafka is now accessible in a supple new English version. The novel takes readers deep inside one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The psyche in issue belongs to Zeno Cosini a neurotic Italian businessman who at his psychiatrist's direction is writing his confessions. Here are Zeno's endless efforts to give up smoking his courtship of the lovely but unresponsive Ada his unexpected and surprisingly happy marriage to Ada's unassuming sister Augusta and his liaison with a shrill-voiced aspiring vocalist. Zeno's Conscience is a miracle of psychological reality because it describes these mishaps with wry humor irony and a perspicacity that is both unflinching and compassionate.