Synopses & Reviews
The novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following the World War II represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of modern life is one of the masterworks of a writer whom as Anthony Burgess once remarked, was "always trying to get to the bottom of the human imbroglio."
Synopsis
Dino is approaching middle age, and he is consumed with boredom - not just a lack of interest in life, but also a feeling of profound disconnection with the world at large. A painter, he has given up his art to live from day to day. Then he meets Cecilia, a beautiful, unabashedly sexual, strangely impassive teenage model who becomes his mistress. But as she eludes his increasingly frantic efforts to take control of her, body and mind - even to buy her if necessary - his own life spins dangerously out of control.
About the Author
Alberto Moravia (1907-1990), the child of a wealthy family, was raised at home because of illness. He published his first novel,
The Time of Indifference, at the age of twenty-three. Banned from publishing under Mussolini, he emerged after World War II as one of the most admired and influential twentieth-century Italian writers. Among his best-known books to have appeared in English are Boredom, The Woman of Rome, The Conformist (the basis for Bernardo Bertolucci’s film), Roman Tales, Contempt (the basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s film), and Two Women.
William Weaver is celebrated for his numerous translations from the Italian, including Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and novels and stories by Italo Calvino.