Writer Italo Svevo had many things in common with other writers: a long struggle for recognition; a friendship with a noteworthy author (in Svevo’s case, James Joyce); and a long list of neuroses. His choice of a wife, however, was anything but common. Livia Veneziani Svevo tirelessly worked on her husband’s behalf after his tragic early death and also penned this remarkable portrait of a serious artist and a loving (if quirky) marriage. Memoir of Italo Svevo tells the story of how a successful middle-aged businessman, as obsessed with smoking as with his abandoned literary ambitions, somehow became one of the great authors of the twentieth century.