As a Man Grows Older     by Italo Svevo, Translated by Beryl De Zoete Original title: Senilità Original language: Italian Published by New York Review of Books, Inc., The Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.67 x 8.03 x 4.99 ISBN: 0940322846 List Price: $12.95 Buy online from Amazon.com for $10.36 Published by Secker Pub. Date: 1980 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 220 pages Not available for ordering Published by Penguin Pub. Date: 1993 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback List Price: £5.99 Not available for ordering

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Considered by some critics to be Svevo’s masterpiece, more consummate and balanced than The Confessions of Zeno, this novel had no success when first published, passing completely unnoticed. Set in the author’s beloved home city of Trieste, it tells the story of a provincial man, Emilio Brentani, who, like Alfonso Nitti in Svevo’s A Life, harbours literary ambitions, and of his ill-fated love for the modest and ambivalent Angiolina. Intended by Emilio to be an understanding free of sentimental impedimenta, their relationship transforms itself instead into the most tormented of passions against whose force all his ambitions are dashed. The confirmation of Emilio’s failure and ineptitude gradually forces him into ever greater compromises, exposing him to an uneven contest with his self-possessed and brilliant friend Balli, a sculptor. His plight also disrupts the life of his sister Amalia, one of the more admirable female characters in Svevo’s works, and condemns him to eternal unhappiness, parted from Angiolina.

As in other novels by Svevo, the trap waiting to ensnare the protagonist is the gap between reality and fantasy, between the concreteness of facts and the ability to understand and participate in them. Emilio Brentani symbolises the convergence of irreconcilable tensions and his life mirrors the widespread inability to span the breach that has opened between the individual and the world that surrounds him.

‘«I can kiss you without making any noise,» he declared, and he pressed his lips against hers and held her mouth a prisoner, while she continued to protest; so that his kiss was broken into a thousand fragments, couched deliciously on her warm breath.’ p28