Real name Ettore Schmitz, Italo Svevo was born in Trieste in 1861. Having completed his studies in Trieste and Germany, Svevo soon realised his passion for literature and it was this passion that led him to publish his first novel "Una vita" at his own expense and to no success. In 1898 he published "Senilita", the story of a deeply unhappy, procrastinating man who is unable to face reality and in which Svevo reveals the many complex strands of the human psyche. When this latter novel did not gain attention, Svevo stopped publishing for 25 years. It wasn't until he met James Joyce, who expressed great admiration for his work and was instrumental in bringing Svevo's writing to the attention of the public, that he received critical acclaim. Svevo's last and most famous novel, "La coscienza di Zeno" was started in 1919 and published in 1923. Showing Svevo's interest in the theories of Freud, the novel is a humorous autobiography of a young man who asks his psychoanalyst to find the origin of his smoking habit. Again, it was not until it was translated and published in France that it was hailed as a masterwork.