A Life

Italo Svevo was born in Trieste in 1861. His real name was Hector Schmitz. Educated mainly in Bavaria, he wrote in Italian, and as a young man had to work as a French and German correspondence clerk in a Trieste bank. He was not happy in the business world and at the age of thirty-one he wrote A Life, and published it at his own expense. It was followed four years later by Senility, a novel of tor...