Italo Svevo's early novel Senilit? (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilit? as a preeminent modern Italian novel. Joyce helped to launch Svevo's career, and years later Svevo achieved great fame with his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno. In Senilit?, Svevo tells the story of the amorous entanglement of Emilio, a failed writer already old at thirty-five, and Angiolina,...