Svevo, Italo (ē`tälō zvā`vō), 1861–1928, Italian novelist, whose real name was Ettore Schmitz, b. Trieste. A businessman, he wrote several works of fiction, but remained practically unknown until discovered by James Joyce Joyce, James, 1882–1941, Irish novelist. Perhaps the most influential and significant novelist of the 20th cent., Joyce was a master of the English language, exploiting all of its resources.
..... Click the link for more information. . His fiction is psychological and introspective, his characters mainly narcissistic, and his style witty. His best-known work, which has been called Italy's first modernist novel, is La coscienza di Zeno (1923, tr. The Confessions of Zeno, 1930, and Zeno's Conscience, 2001); also translated are Una Vita (1892, tr. A Life, 1963), Senilità, (1898; tr. As a Man Grows Older, 1949, rev. tr. 1977, repr. 2001; tr. Emilio's Carnival, 2001), and Una burla riuscita (1928, tr. The Hoax, 1929).

Bibliography

See biographies by P. N. Furbank (1966) and B. Weiss (1987); studies by B. Moloney (1974 and 1977), and L. G. Subrizi (1984).

Svevo, Italo

orig. Ettore Schmitz

(born Dec. 19, 1861, Trieste, Austrian Empire—died Sept. 13, 1928, Motta di Livenza, Italy) Italian writer. Though family financial difficulties forced him to leave school and become a bank clerk, he read on his own and began to write. A Life (1892), revolutionary in its analytical, introspective treatment of an ineffectual hero, was ignored on publication, as was As a Man Grows Older (1898). He gave up writing until, encouraged by James Joyce (then living in Trieste), he produced his most famous novel, Confessions of Zeno (1923), a brilliant work in the form of a patient's statement for his psychiatrist. He died in an auto accident. Two short-story collections, essays, dramatic works, correspondence with Eugenio Montale, and his unfinished Further Confessions of Zeno (1969) were published after his death. He is regarded as a pioneer of the psychological novel.