As A Man Grows Older

Description

Not so long ago Emilio Brentani was a promising young author. Now he is an insurance agent on the fast track to forty. He gains a new lease of life when he falls for the gorgeous Angiolina - except that this angel happens to be an unapologetic cheat. But what begins as a comedy of infatuation and misunderstanding ends in tragedy as Emilio's jealousy and persistence in his folly leads to the loss of the one person whom, too late, he realises he really loves. Marked by deep humanity and earthy humour, by psychological insight and elegant simplicity of style, As a Man Grows Older is a brilliant study of hopeless love and hapless indecision.

Italo Svevo (1861 - 1928) was born Ettore Schmitz into a Jewish family of Italian and German descent. He published two novels in the 1890s, A Life and As a Man Grows Older, both dismissed by the critics and ignored by the public. The disillusioned author went to work in his father's paint factory, only returning to writing after his English tutor, the young James Joyce, asked to see his novels and expressed an admiration for them. With Joyce's support he published The Confessions of Zeno to international acclaim in 1923. Just after completing his novel, The Tale of the Good Old Man and of the Lovely Young Girl, he was killed in a car crash in 1928.

Svevo has the capacity-so rare as to be almost unknown in the English novel-of handling emotional relationships with a combined tenderness, humor and realism....He writes about characters and situations of universal application. - The Times Literary Supplement