Moravia Collection (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Alberto Moravia (Italy), edited by Lu Tongliu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) is one of the most renowned contemporary novelists in Italy. Over his six decades of literary career, he published numerous novels and short story collections. With a realistic style, he touched the depths of the human soul through ordinary stories that occurred in people's lives. His works have had a significant impact on both Italian literature and world literature. This collection, edited by Lu Tongliu, a leading expert in Italian literature, includes five of Moravia's most outstanding works: The Indifferent People, written in the late 1920s, is considered the first existentialist work in the world that Moravia wrote unintentionally. Through the story of a bourgeois family over three days, it exposes the profound indifference of the Italian bourgeoisie at the time. The Women of Chiusi, written just after World War II, is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding post-war novels in Italy. Through the experiences of Cecilia and her daughter during the war, it reveals the suffering of ordinary people under war, especially the devastation of their souls. Contempt features the protagonist Moratti, who aspires to be a playwright but, to win his wife's love, writes movie scripts against his will for a film producer to earn money and satisfy his wife's material desires. When he fulfills her desires, he discovers that she no longer loves him. The novel portrays, from one perspective, the alienation of people in Western society. Attention is a work with a unique technique. As the characters in the book say, the true protagonist is not the protagonist of the novel but the "I" who has been writing a diary, preparing to use it as material for a future novel. Through extensive psychological descriptions and the various events—real or fictional—recorded in the diary by the protagonist "I," the work explores the concept of "original sin." Unwillingness is a short story collection with forty-one works. Characters of different identities and social statuses are unwillingly compelled to do things they do not want to, for reasons they themselves do not understand. Through them, the author portrays the confusion and bewilderment felt by people in modern Western society, as well as the distortion of their mental states. Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) is one of the most renowned contemporary novelists in Italy. Over his six decades of literary career, he published numerous novels and short story collections. With a realistic style, he touched the depths of the human soul through ordinary stories that occurred in people's lives. His works have had a significant impact on both Italian literature and world literature. This collection, edited by Lu Tongliu, a leading expert in Italian literature, includes five of Moravia's most outstanding works: The Indifferent People, written in the late 1920s, is considered the first existentialist work in the world that Moravia wrote unintentionally. Through the story of a bourgeois family over three days, it exposes the profound indifference of the Italian bourgeoisie at the time. The Women of Chiusi, written just after World War II, is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding post-war novels in Italy. Through the experiences of Cecilia and her daughter during the war, it reveals the suffering of ordinary people under war, especially the devastation of their souls. Contempt features the protagonist Moratti, who aspires to be a playwright but, to win his wife's love, writes movie scripts against his will for a film producer to earn money and satisfy his wife's material desires. When he fulfills her desires, he discovers that she no longer loves him. The novel portrays, from one perspective, the alienation of people in Western society. Attention is a work with a unique technique. As the characters in the book say, the true protagonist is not the protagonist of the novel but the "I" who has been writing a diary, preparing to use it as material for a future novel. Through extensive psychological descriptions and the various events—real or fictional—recorded in the diary by the protagonist "I," the work explores the concept of "original sin." Unwillingness is a short story collection with forty-one works. Characters of different identities and social statuses are unwillingly compelled to do things they do not want to, for reasons they themselves do not understand. Through them, the author portrays the confusion and bewilderment felt by people in modern Western society, as well as the distortion of their mental states.