伊塔洛·斯韦沃 (ltalo Svevo, 1861－1928), 原名埃托雷·施米茨（ Ettore Schmitz）， 意大利商人兼小说家，开意大利心理小说的先河，其代表作品包括长篇小说《泽诺的意识》《一生》《当你老去》。 他大器晚成，60岁后才写出成名之作《泽诺的意识》，这本书令其跻身国际重要作家之列，诺贝尔文学奖得主蒙塔莱推崇他为普鲁斯特第二；他与卡夫卡和普鲁斯特并驾齐驱， 是20世纪最出色的小说家之一。

译者

张智中（1966- ），天津师范大学外国语学院英语翻译教师。2005年毕业于南开大学外国语学院，获典籍英译方向博士学位。2007年起于河南大学做博士后研究，主要研究方向是诗歌翻译美学。出版编、译、著24部，发表学术论文近50篇，译诗近2000首，发表诗歌30余首，并曾获多种奖项。被我国著名翻译家许渊冲先生赞为"中国新一代翻译者当中汉英双语能力皆非常出色的年轻一代翻译者。"

Italo Svevo's early novel Senilita (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilita 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 Senilita, Svevo tells the story of the amorous entanglement of Emilio, a failed writer already old at thirty-five, and Angiolina, a seductively beautiful but promiscuous young woman. A study in jealousy and self-torment, the novel traces the intoxicating effect of a narcissistic and amoral woman on an indecisive daydreamer who vacillates between guilt and moral smugness. The novel is suffused with a tragic sense of existence, and the unbreachable distance between one consciousness and another. Svevo's unmistakably modern voice subtly captures rapid shifts in mood and intention, exploiting irony, indirection, and multiple points of view to reveal Emilio's increasing anguish as he comes to recognize the dissonance between himself and his world.