Ten immortal works in the history of the novel

The evolution of a novel stems from myth and oral epic to flow towards the crucial moments like the great novels of the 19th century or capital 20th century works: for example, Robert Musil’s ‘The man without qualities’. Reality blends in with fiction, the characters assert themselves more powerfully than in real life, and exhilarating passages of imagination redirect expertise and knowledge of memory

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La conciencia de Zeno

ITALO SVEVO

Editorial Gadir. Madrid, 2007. Translated by Carlos Manzano

Joyce’s friend spotted by Montale, Trieste-born Italo Svevo was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, not always considered as such. The story of a rich, hesitant, apathetic and hypochondriac Zeno Cosini, inhabitant of the Austro-Hungarian Trieste of the late 19th century, who embarks on psychoanalysis as he tries to give up smoking, becomes a subtle masterpiece of irony and introspection.