Novel
The Time of Indifference
Gli indifferenti
Alberto Moravia · 1929
Synopsis
In a middle-class villa live Mariagrazia Ardengo, a widow, her two children, Carla and Michele, and their mother's lover, Leo Merumeci, a speculator who sets about taking possession of the house through financial manoeuvres. Leo turns his attention to Carla, who is about to turn twenty-four. Michele would like to defend his sister, but the family lets itself drift, without will, in the face of what threatens it.
Context
The novel was begun in the autumn of 1925, during the author's convalescence in Bressanone, and appeared in Milan in 1929; the publisher hesitating to gamble on an unknown, the author's family paid part of the costs. Public success was immediate, the first edition selling out in a few weeks, and the Fascist press disapproved of the book. Paul-Henri Michel translated it into French under the title “Les Indifférents”; in English it appeared in 1953 under the title “The Time of Indifference”, retained by Tami Calliope in her 2000 translation.
Who it is for
A novel almost entirely confined to one setting, with five characters bound to one another by hypocrisy and self-interest.
Prizes and reception
The Treccani regards it as a key novel of twentieth-century Italian literature; Francesco Maselli brought it to the screen in 1964.
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