Aron Hector Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian and Austro-Hungarian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer.
14 Facts About Italo Svevo
2.
Italo Svevo was the cousin of the Italian academic Steno Tedeschi.
3.
Italo Svevo was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War.
4.
Italo Svevo spoke Italian as a second language, as he usually spoke the Triestine dialect.
5.
Italo Svevo adhered to a humanistic and democratic socialism, which predisposed him to pacifism, and to advocate for the creation of a European economic union after the war.
6.
Italo Svevo became a partner in his wealthy father-in-law's paint business - that specialized in manufacturing industrial paint, that was used on naval warships.
7.
Italo Svevo became successful in growing the business, and after trips to France and Germany set up a branch of the company in England.
8.
Italo Svevo lived for part of his life in Charlton, south-east London, while working for a family firm.
9.
Italo Svevo documented this period in his letters to his wife, which highlighted the cultural differences he encountered in Edwardian England.
10.
Italo Svevo took on the pseudonym "Italo Svevo" for the publication of his first novel, Una Vita, in 1892.
11.
In 1923 Italo Svevo published the psychological novel La Coscienza di Zeno.
12.
Italo Svevo's novel received almost no attention from Italian readers and critics at the time.
13.
Zeno Cosini, the book's hero and unreliable narrator, mirrored Italo Svevo himself, being a businessman fascinated by Freudian theory.
14.
Italo Svevo was a model for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Joyce's seminal novel Ulysses.