A Perfect Hoax

✍ Scribed by Italo Svevo

• Book ID: 110669040
• Publisher: Alma Books
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 53 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781847497758
• ASIN: B07MZ8H59X

✦ Synopsis

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.