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ALBERTO MORAVIA (1907-1980) was a prolific Italian novelist, short-story writer and
journalist known for his explorations of modern sexuality, social alienation and
existentialism. He remained until his death a cultural icon and presence in
Italian public life, and was a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in
Literature, having been nominated 13 times between 1949 and 1965.
Moravia once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his
illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five
years and Fascism, because they both caused him to suffer and do things he
otherwise would not have done. "It is what we are forced to do that forms our
character, not what we do of our own free will."
Critics praised his stark, unadorned style, his exacting attention to psychological
complexity and social pretension, his narrative skill and ability to create
realistic dialogue. His debut novel, THE TIME OF INDIFFERENCE (1929), is a
scathingly realistic study of the moral corruption of a middle-class mother and two
of her children; it destroys forever any illusion that a world of ever-growing
material comfort can feed the human soul. It became a sensation. Among his more
important novels are AGOSTINO [Two Adolescents] (1944); THE WOMAN OF ROME (1947),
which calmly strips away the pride and arrogance hiding the corrupt heart of
Italian Fascism; and THE CONFORMIST (1951), all on the themes of isolation and
alienation. CONTEMPT (1954) is is an unflinching examination of desperation and
self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society. TWO WOMEN
(1957) is a compassionate yet forthright narrative of simple people struggling to
survive in war. The sexual realism of THE EMPTY CANVAS (1960), the story of a
painter unable to find meaning either in love or work, introduced the
psychologically experimental works of the 1970s.
== NOVELS ==
== SHORT STORIES ==
* Command, and I Will Obey You (FSG, 1969). Angus Davidson, trans.
* Erotic Tales (FSG, 1986). Tim Parks, trans.
* Fetish and Other Stories, The (FSG, 1965). A. Davidson, trans. [pp. 195-96
missing]
* More Roman Tales (Farrar Straus, 1964). Angus Davidson, trans.
* Roman Tales (Signet, 1959). Angus Davidson, trans.
== NON-FICTION ==
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