Emilio's Carnival or "Senilita" (Yale Nota Bene) - Hardcover

"This publication is an important, welcome event. Svevo's almost unknown masterpiece, Senilita, is now available in a fresh, deft new translation by Beth Archer Brombert. Victor Brombert's introduction aptly places Svevo and the novel in the great European tradition." William Weaver, Bard College "Senilita is unquestionably a classic, a masterpiece by a great writer and Italo Svevo's best work. Beth Archer Brombert's translation is excellent and catches the simple and enigmatic quality of Svevo's prose. It will gain many readers for this classic novel and will not be replaced for a long, long time." Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University

Italo Svevo's early novel Senilita (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilita as a preeminent modern Italian novel. Joyee helped to launch Svevo's career, and years later Svevo achieved great fame with his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno. In Senilita, Svevo tells the story of the amorous entanglement of Emilio, a failed writer already old at thirty-five, and Angiolina, a seductively beautiful but promiscuous young woman. A study in jealousy and self-torment, the novel traces the intoxicating effect of a narcissistic and amoral woman on an indecisive daydreamer who vacillates between guilt and moral smugness. The novel is suffused with a tragic sense of existence, and the unbreachable distance between one consciousness and another. Svevo's unmistakably modern voice subtly captures rapid shifts in mood and intention, exploiting irony, indirection, and multiple points of view to reveal Emilio's increasing anguish as he comes to recognise the dissonance between himself and his world.