Editions

Zeno's Conscience

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241372609

  • Length: 464  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 319g

  • RRP: £9.99

Zeno's Conscience

A marvel of psychological insight from one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century

When vain, obsessive and guilt-ridden Zeno Cosini seeks help for his neuroses, his psychoanalyst suggests he writes his memoirs as a form of therapy. Zeno's account is an alternative reality, a series of elliptical episodes dealing with the death of his father, his career, his marriage and affairs, and, above all, his passion for smoking and his spectacular failure to resist the promise of that last cigarette. A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination, Svevo's devilishly funny portrayal of a man's attempt to give up smoking and make sense of his life has become a cult classic.

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241372609

  • Length: 464  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 319g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom

    London Review of Books

More from this Author

About the Author

Italo Svevo

Aron Ettore Schmitz (December 19, 1861 - September 13, 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian businessman and author of novels, plays, and short stories. His best-known novel is The Confessions of Zeno (or Zeno's Conscience) (1923). Svevo published the work at the age of 62 at his own expense. The novel, dealing with the self-revelations of a nicotine addict, is considered one of the greatest examples of European experimental modernist writing. Svevo was killed in an automobile accident. Further Confessions of Zeno (1969) appeared posthumously.

Italo Svevo

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