Books › Confession of Zeno
Confession of Zeno
First published 1958 · 940 pages
A delightfully neurotic plunge into the mind of a man who can endlessly rationalize his own absurdities.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like being cornered at a café by the most charming, frustrating, and endlessly talkative neurotic you have ever met. The narrative pace is decidedly meandering, mirroring the digressive, looping thoughts of a mind that cannot stop analyzing itself. It is a deeply introspective experience, yet surprisingly light on its feet, buoyed by a wry, darkly comic tone that makes the protagonist's endless self-deceptions hilarious rather than tragic. You are trapped inside an amusingly claustrophobic atmosphere of hypochondria and rationalization, watching a man try and spectacularly fail to exert willpower over his own life. It will absolutely delight readers who love modernist character studies, unreliable narrators, and the absurd comedy of human psychology.
- Mood
- absurdist
- introspective
- melancholic
- amusingly claustrophobic
- Tone
- wry
- ironic
- neurotic
- self-deprecating
- darkly comic
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- self-deception · illusion of willpower · hypochondria and illness · unreliability of memory · absurdity of modern life
- The writing
- Digressive, conversational, and deceptively logical, perfectly mirroring the endless rationalizations of an unreliable mind.
- The arc
- Moves from obsessive, anxious self-scrutiny to a bizarrely triumphant, ironic acceptance of human frailty and cosmic chaos.
- Who it's for
- Lovers of modernist literature and psychological fiction who delight in spending time with charmingly flawed, endlessly overthinking narrators.
Content notes
- addiction
- infidelity
- hypochondria
- death of a parent
About the book
Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno's interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected -- and unexpectedly happy -- marriage to Ada's homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. -- Text refers to other edition.
Description from Open Library.
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