Italo Svevo died in Motta di Livenza, Italy, in September 1928. Other works available in English are the novellas The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl ( La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla: 1926) and A Perfect Hoax ( Una burla riuscita: 1926). After World War I, he wrote the semi-autobiographical novel Zeno’s Conscience ( La coscenza di Zeno: 1923) that made his fame only after its translation into French upon the initiative of James Joyce. Disillusioned by being ignored as an author, Italo Svevo focused on family and business until his English teacher James Joyce encouraged him to resume writing. For his debut novel A Life ( Una vita: 1892) that was followed by As a Man Grows Older ( Senilità: 1896), he adopted the pseudonym Italo Svevo. After his father’s bankruptcy in 1880, he worked in a bank for nearly twenty years and started his writing career with articles for a newspaper along with first short stories published under the pseudonym Ettore Samigli. He attended a German boarding school and then studied commerce in Trieste. Italo Svevo was born Aron Hector Schmitz in Trieste, Austrian Empire (today: Italy), in December 1861, but later changed his name to Ettore Schmitz.

Upon the psychiatrist’s request he wrote his memoirs until losing interest. In Trieste of the mid-1910s, the wealthy protagonist of Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo consults a Freudian psychiatrist only because he is curious about this absurd new method and ready to try out anything to rid himself of his (imagined) ailments. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to explore the unknown, repressed sides of the soul, but his work wasn’t really taken seriously at first. Human nature wants it that these shadows of our characters terribly annoy us when we recognise them in others, and yet, we seldom become aware that they are actually ours, too. Sometimes it can be just as difficult to understand own behaviour and thoughts as it can be to figure out a complete stranger, not least because we all have traits in us that we like to overlook because we disapprove of them.

Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo