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William Weaver has translated Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino and Roberto Calasso, among others. He is a professor at Bard College. His translation of Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller is available in Everyman's Library.
Everyone has heard of James Joyce, yet how many have heard the name of his friend and contemporary Italo Svevo? Let us hope that this new edition, published by the perennially popular Everyman and featuring the first new translation of this exceptional novel for 70 years, will bring deserved recognition to this Italian author. In a psychological master-stroke, he has his anti-hero, the philandering, middle-aged Zeno Cosini, tell his own story in the form of a memoir his doctor has instructed him to write as a prelude to his psychoanalysis. The hapless Cosini is careful to show his every move, his every motivation, in as favourable a light as possible, yet, as we read his account through the eyes of the analyst, the truth behind the facade is revealed. Although vain, Cosini is an engaging character, and his struggle to give up smoking, a theme that recurs throughout the book, never fails to elicit a wry smile, his constant refrain of 'L.C.' - for 'Last Cigarette!' - peppering his path through life. He falls in with an older merchant who has four daughters, each of whose names begins with A, and in typical Zeno fashion, ends up marrying the wrong one. Just as he is unable to resist the lure of tobacco, so he is drawn into a messy affair with an aspiring singer, and we are exposed to the full force of his hypocrisy and self-justification. Similarly, we hear about all the favours he has done to his in-laws, offering them financial salvation when it is clear that it is partly his fault - a speculative venture gone badly wrong - that they are in the mess in the first place. It is perhaps appropriate that the novel is set in Svevo's own home city of Trieste. The fractured identity of this port, now in Italy, but in 1923 still part of Austria, is a fitting metaphor for the fractured glass through which we can make out the constituent parts of Zeno's life, and how others see him. It is sometimes hard to believe that Svevo wrote this in the early 20th century - its complex, introspective themes and simple, unadorned language, with its light and humorous touches, have a very modern feel - and the only pity is that he is not the household name he deserves to be. (Kirkus UK)
