{"product_id":"a-very-old-man-isbn-9781681375939","title":"A Very Old Man","description":"\u003cb\u003eA newly translated collection of fiction by the influential Italian modernist, continuing on his landmark work \u003ci\u003eZeno's Conscience\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Very Old Man\u003c\/i\u003e collects five linked stories, parts of an unfinished novel that the great Triestine Italo Svevo wrote at the end of his life, after the international success of \u003ci\u003eZeno’s Conscience\u003c\/i\u003e in 1923. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere Svevo revisits with new vigor and agility themes that fascinated him from the start—aging, deceit, and self-deception, as well as the fragility, fecklessness, and plain foolishness of the bourgeois paterfamilias—even as memories of the recent, terrible slaughter of World War I and the contemporary rise of Italian fascism also cast a shadow over the book’s pages. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt opens with “The Contract,” in which Zeno’s manager, the hardheaded young Olivi, expresses, like the war veterans who were Mussolini’s early followers, a sense of entitlement born of fighting in the trenches. Zeno, by contrast, embodies the confusion and paralysis of the more decorous, although sleepy, way of life associated with the onetime Austro-Hungarian Empire which for so long ruled over Trieste but has now been swept away. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs always, Svevo is attracted to the theme of how people fail to fit in. It is they, he suggests, who offer a recognizably human countenance in a world ravaged by the ambitions and fantasies of its true believers.\"Frederika Randall’s translation manages to capture the infinite variety of Zeno’s self-delusions, from being forced out of the business he’s spent his entire adult life doing, to being a grandfather and (briefly) a mistress-keeper.\" —Tom Bodwen, \u003ci\u003eBook Beat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The very old man is still a fabulist, and his lies still have marvellous staying power. . . . As ever, his circumstances clash with his imaginings – and as ever, it is reality that ultimately gives way and transforms.” —Becca Rothfield, \u003ci\u003eNew Left Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It’s always fascinating to see a great writer’s work in progress; this is no exception\" —Corinne Segal, \u003ci\u003eLit Hub\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For Svevo, life itself is a fatal pathology, the human condition a sickness for which there is no cure. There exists a treatment, however: laughter. Though the miseries of old age and fear of death are central to his late stories, a huge amount of laughter occurs in \u003ci\u003eA Very Old Man\u003c\/i\u003e.” —Sigrid Nunez, \u003ci\u003eHarper's Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eItalo Svevo\u003c\/b\u003e (1861–1928) was an Italian writer and businessman. He published two novels in the 1890s, \u003ci\u003eA Life\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAs a Man Grows Older\u003c\/i\u003e (the latter available from NYRB Classics), but after they were dismissed by critics and ignored by the public, he abandoned literature and went to work in his father-in-law’s paint business. With the support of James Joyce, he returned to writing and published \u003ci\u003eZeno’s Conscience\u003c\/i\u003e in 1923 to international acclaim. Svevo had finished a new book and was at work on another when he was killed in a car crash in 1928. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrederika Randall\u003c\/b\u003e (1948–2020) was a writer, reporter, and translator. Among her translations are Ippolito Nievo’s \u003ci\u003eConfessions of an Italian\u003c\/i\u003e and, for NYRB Classics, Guido Morselli’s \u003ci\u003eDissipatio H.G.\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Communist\u003c\/i\u003e. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Translation and the PEN\/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and with Sergio Luzzatto, the Cundill Prize.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNathaniel Rich \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of \u003ci\u003eLosing Earth: A Recent History, \u003c\/i\u003ea finalist for the PEN\/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award; the novels \u003ci\u003eKing Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOdds Against Tomorrow\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Mayor’s Tongue\u003c\/i\u003e; and the Little Bookroom title \u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Noir\u003c\/i\u003e. He is a writer-at-large for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Magazine \u003c\/i\u003eand a regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Harper’s\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in New Orleans.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304441991397,"sku":"NP9781681375939","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681375939.jpg?v=1767720896","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/a-very-old-man-isbn-9781681375939","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}