Perfect Hoax
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Travelling salesman Enrico Gaia decides to play a trick on the conceited ageing littérateur Mario Samigli: he dupes him into thinking that a representative of a prestigious Viennese publishing house wants to commission a German translation of a long-forgotten novel Samigli had written and published at his own expense forty years ago. This leads the old man to reach new heights of self-delusion, spurred on by Gaia’s succession of ruses.
In this tragicomic study of deception and disappointment, Italo Svevo – who himself was an undiscovered writer until his old age – parodies elements of his own life and offers an insightful psychological portrait of a person who has lost touch with reality.
Born in Trieste to a Jewish German father and an Italian mother, Italo Svevo (1861–1928) worked for his father-in-law’s paint business for most of his life and was unknown as a writer until the 1923 publication of Zeno’s Conscience, which is now considered a classic of Italian fiction.