Italian · Advanced
Read Senilità in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: As a Man Grows Older
Italo Svevo · 1898
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About the book
Senilità by Italo Svevo was first published in 1898. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 65,700 words.
He wanted a light, easy love affair. He got an obsession.
Emilio Brentani is thirty-five, a modest office clerk in Trieste who once published a novel that nobody remembers. He lives a quiet, careful life with his shy sister Amalia, convinced that real experience is still waiting for him somewhere.
Then he meets Angiolina, a beautiful, laughing young woman of the people, and decides to begin a pleasant affair without commitments. But Angiolina is far more elusive than he imagined, and Emilio, jealous and full of illusions, sinks deeper into a passion he cannot control. Watching it all is his friend Stefano Balli, a sculptor who is everything Emilio is not: confident, cynical and adored by women.
Italo Svevo's second novel was a commercial failure until James Joyce praised it and the world took notice. Sharp, ironic and quietly heartbreaking, As a Man Grows Older is a masterpiece of self-deception.
- Author
- Italo Svevo
- First published
- 1898
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 65,700 words
How it opens
Subito, con le prime parole che le rivolse, volle avvisarla che non intendeva compromettersi in una relazione troppo seria. Parlò cioè a un dipresso così: — T’amo molto e per il tuo bene desidero ci si metta d’accordo di andare molto cauti. — La parola era tanto prudente ch’era difficile di crederla detta per amore altrui, e un po’ più franca avrebbe dovuto suonare così: — Mi piaci molto, ma nella mia vita non potrai essere giammai più importante di un giocattolo. Ho altri doveri io, la mia carriera, la mia famiglia.
Reading Senilità in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Italian book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
