Boredom
by Alberto Moravia
Buy on AmazonThe novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following the World War II represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of modern life is one of the masterworks of a writer whom as Anthony Burgess once remarked, was "always trying to get to the bottom of the human imbroglio."
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"As I was reading it in its Arabic translation in the mid-1960s, I told myself, "So one can write about anything, even about his own boredom, himself, or social alienation." I loved the narrator's tone, as if I was hearing him talking to me."
By the Book: Hanan Al Shaykh · nytimes.com